• Credit Suisse Unveils Promised Reorg, Cuts Prime Brokerage In Pivot To 'Catering To World's Rich'
  Credit Suisse Unveils Promised Reorg, Cuts Prime Brokerage In Pivot To ‘Catering To World’s Rich’

  A couple of quarters have passed since Archegos, the family office of former “Tiger Cub” Bill Hwang, got hit with the margin call of a lifetime (mostly thanks to ViacomCBS announcing a  sale of a $3BN chunk of preferred stock) and collapsed spectacularly, forcing half a dozen megabanks to try and sort out an orderly exit from the fund’s highly-leveraged trades (to which they had unwittingly become principals) before Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley kicked down the door and liquidated Archegos’s positions in a series of massive block trades that fascinated Wall Street.

  News of the blowup briefly turned the broader market red (not an easy feat in the era of Fed-induced easy money), sparking chatter about contagion, but it fell particularly hard on the shares of Credit Suisse and Nomura, whose prime brokerage businesses were the most exposed to Archegos’s positions. Both banks reported losses in the billions of dollars – with Credit Suisse reporting more than $5 billion in losses attributed to Archegos during the first quarter. In time, it was revealed the bank had earned only $17MM in revenue from its dealings with Archegos, which its PB desk had sought to placate in order to win more business.

  The collapse of the family office prompted Democratic lawmakers like Elizabeth Warren to demand more transparency surrounding reporting of family office positions, since Archegos had managed to keep the fact that it effectively controlled more than 5% of ViacomCBS’s shares via its swap positions with various prime brokers a secret (funds are legally required in the US to report positions above that threshold).

  

  Warren has continued to use the Archegos collapse as fuel for her criticisms of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell, whom she demanded resign back in September.

  Credit Suisse swiftly fired a handful of senior (and not-so-senior) employees, including its chief risk manager and compliance officer, while promising shareholders it would reorganize its business, hinting that its prime brokerage and other risky businesses tied to hedge funds would be dramatically scaled back.

  Well, the time has finally come for CS to deliver on this promise. Switzerland’s second-largest investment bank by assets released its Q3 earnings results early Thursday, alongside a plan to reorganize its sprawling business, exit most hedge-fund-financing related businesses.

  As far as the results go, JPMorgan analyst Kian Abouhossein described them as “strong”, although others warned that shareholders should expect “further writedowns” as the restructuring plan progresses and more regulatory penalties are assessed (note: CS has recently been hit with penalties by American and British regulators that had nothing to do with Archegos). CS also warned of the potential for the bank to take a net loss during the final three months of the year. As for Q3, the bank reported lower net income of CHF434M vs. CHF546M YoY, a 21% drop.

  As for the restructuring, the bank is using a tried-and-true playbook that has (so far, at least) worked for another struggling European banking giant: Deutsche Bank.

  According to WSJ, the bank plans to make “catering to the world’s rich” its new central mission by consolidating its global operations in private banking and wealth management under one roof, while it plans to exit its prime brokerage and other businesses that help hedge funds finance trades.

  But otherwise, its investment bank will remain mostly intact. What’s more, CS plans to expand its wealth management business with new hires, estimating that it will spend roughly $440MM on the restructuring effort. As a result of the reorg, the bank says it expects to take a 1.6 billion Swiss franc ($1.75BN) goodwill writedown that will likely be the cause of the expected Q4 loss.

  More specific details about the restructuring effort – along with changes to the bank’s senior management – will be rolled out in January, according to Chairman António Horta-Osório, who affirmed that CEO Thomas Gottstein would remain in the CEO’s seat to oversee the restructuring.

  Shares of the Swiss bank gyrated in the wake of the earnings report and announcement as investors digested the announcement with a fair bit of skepticism.

  A Swiss bank catering to the world’s richest? Doesn’t UBS already do that?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/05/2021 – 02:45

• The Controlled Demolition Of The EU
  The Controlled Demolition Of The EU

  Authored by Marco Rocco via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Draghi represents the forced continuity wanted by the Paris-Berlin axis for the EU: the Italians wanted to leave in 2020, the solution was the former head of the ECB as Prime Minister. How long will it last, with galloping inflation and Poland as anti-EU?

  

  The EU is under attack, 360 degrees, from a variety of fronts. From the west, with the Brexit. From the south, with the Euro-weak countries in which people dream of leaving the euro, clearly crippled – perhaps I should say “looted” – by the so-called “expansive austerity” (an oxymoron) of Franco-German matrix. And now also from the northeast, with Poland put in check and fined by the EU for the sole fault of wanting to continue to “be Poland”. Above all, the galloping inflation, exogenous in origin, which in a few months will no longer be able to be contained even in Latin countries, which today are still silently experiencing governmental manipulation of consumer price indexes (I imagine that social peace will not last long; see the report on prices for September 2021 published by the MISE/Italian Ministry of Economic Development, with prices in general vertical ascent – very often even in double digits – but with inflation “only” at 2.9%, totally absurd).

  The above clearly points to an ongoing paradigm shift.

  That is, the EU engineered to live on devaluation with the Euro (much weaker than the hypothetical German mark), or with the hidden aim of transferring wealth from the Europeripheral countries to the center of the Empire, is finally in the priority need – on the core Europe side – to tame inflation before being able to export thanks to an artificially devalued currency.

  It is in fact clear that a country, or rather a “political continent”, without raw materials like Old Europe, is obliged to contain first of all the costs of production if it wants to hope to survive without destroying the social base on which its power is based, e.g. when inflation bites. That is to say, being tempted – on the German side – to mimic, today, with a new mark yet to come, the wise Switzerland and its franc, which has been rising steadily for months precisely in order to counter international inflationary pressures. And therefore, prospectively leaving the EU to its rubble, rubble on which Paris will certainly throw itself like a vulture, first of all on the Italian ones.

  All the more so if, in this context, the USA and the FED are anticipating – as is clearly happening – the events by making the dollar rise in an anti-inflationary capacity (but also having abundant raw materials in place, above all oil, a situation not unlike the times of the attack on Nixon, see De Gaulle’s provocation on the convertibility of dollars into gold and the subsequent Watergate scandal, ed.)

  Now then, in addition to the centrifugal drives within the EU, i.e. having as a driver the national interests of Southern Europe, mainly Italy, perfectly legitimate interests, a macro-economic context is also generating that will lead us to the epilogue expected to the title, due to inflation and related monetary policies: the controlled demolition of the EU based on the euro.

  It should be remembered, for example, that Rome has seen in recent years a massive reduction in its own welfare (e.g. in terms of wages); to this is added – TODAY – interest from the center of the Empire in a paradigm shift, the first time in almost 25 years.

  In addition, here is Poland’s recent response to the diktats of Brussels aimed at ceding superfunds (i.e. its own welfare) to EU interference; Poland clearly supported by the USA, see the so-called “Trump Base”, i.e. the US military installation in Poland recently inaugurated by the States on Polish soil.

  A brutal response to say the least: in this context the Polish government has announced that the largest fine imposed by the EU to a country that gravitates in its sphere of continental influence, will not be paid anyway.

  On the contrary Warsaw foresees a progressive enlargement of its armed forces, always with American support, a constant Anglo-Polish collaboration since the times of Brezinsky, Sikorsky and marriages in the heart of the US corporate with Polish soul (J&J above all).

  * * *

  In all this we must not underestimate the reaction of Berlin, as always upset when its plans do not follow the expected trajectory: although it has not been properly emphasized by the EU media always too pro-German, as to the Reich themes, the German move that will lead to chaos (come) is materializing before our eyes, see the incredible announcement of the German Defense Minister of military intervention in the Baltic even with the nuclear threat as anti-Russian, ie with weapons that Germans theoretically would not have (…).

  This exudes desperation (never forget that the German system, then survived in various ways the post WWII purges, is the same that laid the foundations for the atomic military industry 80 years ago, ed).

  Clearly, the US power factor remains in the background, ready to be activated if necessary to defend the stars and stripes interests. To date, however, the situation remains extremely fluid.

  We can however fix some stakes, as of now, to understand how we arrived to such a EUrocentric debacle, that is where we are today. And perhaps try to hypothesize some future developments.

  First of all, Draghi represents the real factor of continuity wanted by the EU to dampen the centrifugal pressures aimed at leaving this EU: too many people forget that only a few months ago, in 2020, the majority of Italians publicly expressed their support for an exit from the Union, as reported not without a vein of ill-concealed terror by the website german-foreign-policy.com only last year.

  Accomplice to the fall of Trump, instead, Draghi arrived to stop the Italian diaspora, after the media canonization of Draghi at the Rimini meeting last year, preparatory to his landing at Palazzo Chigi, thanks to the activism of the leader of the Milanese “Compagnia delle Opere” (the German Bernhard Scholz), a religious-ethical entity contiguous to Communion and Liberation and perhaps even reminiscent of the activism in German protection of Cardinal Ildefonso Schuster 75 years ago.

  Clearly an attempt to postpone the plan to deflagrate the EU via dollarization of Italian debt, as winked at by Giuseppe Conte in last year’s Eurogroup, behind US impetus (“…if we don’t go it alone,” said the Italian prime minister at the time, making Angela Merkel’s entourage excited).

  * * *

  In this context, it is essential to understand the genesis of Mario Draghi, a character who is grafted in a groove that is Anglo but intrinsically pro-EU. Noting that we are dealing with the area that we can roughly define as the “Cameronian world”, i.e. that pro-EU British elite that is behind the genesis, in the Peninsula, of both the 5 Star Movement and the Regeni case (no small detail, the wife of the former British Prime Minister – a Countess Astor – had a primary Christian education, ed).

  

  That is, Draghi is supported by a political-elitist area of Anglo matrix that has always been close in its interests to Paris, as German containment (to represent less summarily the address of this, let’s say, pro-European current based in the Perfect Albion, one could go back to the “Scots Guards” of Mary Stuart in the French capital, who were also in defense of Joan of Arc, ed.)

  Hence the natural closeness of the world that orbits around the current Italian Prime Minister towards what France represents, today especially given the expected turn of Berlin towards a more German set-up (Goethe himself depicted the printing of money as mephistophelian, diabolical, as it created inflation).

  Unfortunately, the above does not augur well for future Franco-Italian relations, which will certainly be to Rome’s disadvantage; a relationship that the two neighboring countries will necessarily develop from here on, that is, during the period of German meditation on what to do with the current EU, thanks to the subjugation of the Roman political class to interests that are more French than Italian.

  Hence the expectation of a new Franco-Italian strategic macro-agreement signed by Draghi soon, I repeat, to French advantage.

  

  Wages on EU, from 1990 to 2020: “Italy is the only European country where wages have decreased compared to 1990” – Openpolis on OECD data – at LINK

  In this context, with inflation now out of control, with economic growth actually close to recession if netted with the correct GDP deflator, Italian BTPs fell below a very important technical level, 150 points, only last Friday.

  At the end of the game, however, it will always be the Peninsula to act as a watershed in the fate of the EU, with its expected collapse of public finances, in the long term, i.e. with the markets very skeptical about the possibility of repaying the huge debt in euro (…): for your information, today the Italian GDP without undeclared activity exceeds 180% of GDP. And with a number of pensions paid by the State equal to about the same of the employees: it is not a question of Italian implosion by remaining in the euro, only of when.

  Finally, here creeps the Green agenda, always with Italy as center of gravity, to be saved with money borrowed from the same Italian citizens but in the name of the EU (the Recovery Fund is in lagrghissima part a loan, guaranteed in fact by the assets of Italian families), that is the total value of the PNRR of about 200 billion euros – paid in 3-4 years – of which the Recovery Fund, only about 30 billion euros are lost!

  In addition to the madness of mass vaccinations in Italy, now with a target of 90% vaccinated and with the de facto obligation of universal vaccination, under penalty of the impossibility of working. Even in this context we simply observe that there is a huge and obvious correlation now between vaccination madness in selected countries and technical failure, in fact, of their local pension systems (on all, Italy, France, Israel, Austria with its minimum retirement age still below 60 years on average, ed).

  * * *

  In conclusion, it is easy to expect a controlled demolition of the EU, starting with German and pro-German drives aimed at shielding themselves from international inflationary pressures by returning to a surrogate of the new mark, stronger than the euro. At the same time, the centrifugal drives within the EU, undeniable e.g. on the Italian side if you want to ensure a minimum of future prosperity to their people, will be concentrated in the Europeripheral countries, i.e. where the state welfare institutions are practically bankrupt. Only to end in an inevitable contingency of, let’s say, reduced monetary union, in which Paris – once Germany crosses the Rubicon of the return to a stronger currency – will play the card of a “Euro-CFA” with Italy as a wingman; or rather, a Euro Med (or better yet, French Euro) in which the African countries of the CFA franc are replaced by Italy and perhaps Greece.

  In this context, the only addendum that does not add up are the 100 US military bases in Italy, of which at least 4-5 are nuclear, together with the largest US weapons depot outside the US borders.

  It is not to be excluded, therefore, a renewed next American activism aimed – encore – to neutralize threats to its strategic interests; we believe that this effort will not be too dissimilar from what was the American intervention in Indochina or more properly in the Suez Canal (these facts led to an implosion of the residual French and veteran-European colonial network in the world, ed).

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/05/2021 – 02:00

• Noam Chomsky Goes Off The Deep End – Proving That All Socialism Leads To Tyranny
  Noam Chomsky Goes Off The Deep End – Proving That All Socialism Leads To Tyranny

  Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.us,

  I was recently watching a new interview with 92-year-old Noam Chomsky, a figure of general worship among leftist academics, and I began reminiscing about the first time I read the book ‘Manufacturing Consent’. Though I have never agreed with Chomsky’s politics I have always appreciated his analysis on the methods the establishment uses to control mass psychology and silence popular discourse. I have long felt that this was an area where the political left and conservatives might intersect in our views and find common ground. This is why I felt an extra dose of disappointment when I witnessed Chomsky go off the deep end this week and suggest that people who refuse to comply with vaccine mandates need to be ostracized from society.

  

  Chomsky compared people who don’t comply with the vaccines to people who don’t comply with traffic lights, suggesting we pose an imminent danger to others and that we should be removed. When asked how unvaxxed people forced out of the economy could be fed (how would they survive), he asserted “that is their problem.” Chomsky does not explicitly say that force should be used to eliminate the unvaxxed from social participation, he merely insinuates that “actions” might be required to get the desired effect.

  I was around 20 years of age back in 2001 when I first read Manufacturing Consent. I was young and not fully aware at the time of a basic function of the political left and socialism that is vital to understand: Many people claim there is a “spectrum” of political beliefs on the left and that there are those that support socialism or centralization while also supporting freedom, but this is simply not so. At the core of their ideology freedom has no home, and when pressed on where they truly stand every socialist WILL eventually support tyranny as a means to achieve their Utopian vision of society.

  Chomsky has long claimed himself to be a “libertarian socialist.” In the past I have found that a classic misdirection of covertly authoritarian people is to tack the “libertarian” label onto whatever they believe in. Con-men like Chomsky figure that most normies don’t actually know what libertarianism is, but they’ll assume it means that you “support liberty.” It’s a calculated abuse of the ideology designed to mask the collectivist’s true intentions.

  I don’t even know that I personally fit into the libertarian framework, but I do hold some of its basic tenets as fundamental.

  A key pillar of libertarianism is the Non-Aggression Principle – A foundational rule for society that says the use of force or coercion to impose one’s beliefs or ideology on others is wrong, and the use of force in general is wrong unless it is in defense of yourself or the lives of others. The problem with socialists and collectivists is that they ALWAYS find a way to claim that their brand of force is somehow in defense of the lives of others. That is to say, the “greater good” is the go-to excuse for all modern totalitarians.

  Chomsky will claim that his hard-line stance against unvaccinated people is predicated on saving lives, and that’s the great swindle. When science and logic is applied, we see that the vax mandates have nothing to do with protecting the lives or safety of the public. That said, those same mandates are very effective in elevating the socialist goal of total centralization. How convenient…

  Chomsky’s bias is evident in the lack of rational thought he puts forward. In fact, Chomsky never addresses the basic contradictions inherent in his claim that traffic laws and vaccine mandates are the same.

  Firstly, covid mandates are NOT laws; they are dictates that have never been voted on by a single legislature nor the American people. This means mandates are meaningless in a legal sense. At least with new traffic laws the voters or legislators get some say in potential changes. The vaccine mandates are purely totalitarian in nature and completely circumvent all constitutional checks and balances.

  Imagine if one day Biden assumed defacto control over all traffic rules, and then claimed the authority to deny all people who run red lights access to the majority of jobs and the overall economy? That would be absurd, right? Well, that’s exactly what Biden and his globalist handlers are doing with the covid mandates.

  Secondly, obeying a traffic light is not the same as allowing yourself to be injected with a barely tested experimental mRNA cocktail – a “vaccine” which numerous health and virology professionals have warned could have potentially damaging side effects including autoimmune disorders, blood clots and infertility. Traffic lights have been in existence for decades; we know a red light is not going to harm our health. The covid vaccines have been in existence for about a year and have no long term testing (that has ever been released to the public) to back their safety.

  All vaccines in common usage today were tested for at least 10 to 15 years before being released for use on the wider population. The covid vaccines were slapped together at “warp speed”, at least according the official story. Who are the guinea pigs for these mRNA jabs? The entire human population. Every person in the country is now considered a guinea pig.

  We have no idea what the implications of this unprecedented experiment will be in the next few years.

  Chomsky’s comparisons are obviously ridiculous and it’s frustrating that I’m required to point this out.  One would think that the co-author of ‘Manufacturing Consent’ would be able to easily discern the massive differences in terms of violating public freedom. But, for some reason he can’t seem to grasp the foolishness at the heart of his debate. Or, he is being deliberately ignorant because he thinks, like many globalists, that there is something to be gained in going along with the farce…

  The “greater good” theory is meant to either appeal-to or silence conservatives and libertarians that oppose the vaccines on the grounds of the non-aggression principle. Covid mandates rely on the claim that the unvaccinated are an integral danger to society as a whole, and thus force is justified. Now, I have been asking this question over and over again for the past year to any vax fanatic I run across, and not a single person has come up with a valid counter-argument:

  If the vaccines work, then how are unvaccinated people a threat to vaccinated people? If the vaccines don’t work, then why take them in the first place and why mandate them?

  What does Chomsky think the average death rate of covid actually is? Is he aware that according to dozens of peer reviewed studies the median Infection Fatality Rate (IFR) of covid is only 0.27%? Who exactly are the unvaxxed a threat to? Less than 1% of the population? And if we are actually a threat to these people, then maybe THEY should take the vaccines, if they think the vaccines truly work.

  What about the fact that vaccinated people still transmit the disease to others, according the the CDC narrative?

  Furthermore, new studies from countries with very high rates of vaccination have shown that natural immunity formed by people who have already had covid (like I have) is superior in protection against future contraction or transmission of the covid virus. Natural immunity is up to 27 times more effective than the vaccines. It trumps the jab to an epic degree.

  And what about all those breakthrough cases and deaths of fully vaccinated people? Chomsky must be ignoring those as well. Nearly 60% of all people hospitalized in Israel are fully vaccinated; 56% of all covid deaths from April to October in Ireland were people who received at least one vaccination. Who caused that? Unvaxxed people most of whom have superior natural immunity? Or, vaccinated people with low comparative immunity and the ability to transmit the disease?

  Maybe Chomsky just isn’t educated on the science, or maybe he doesn’t care. Either way, his mentality is destructive and typical of socialists and leftists.

  I am reminded of a radio show I did many years ago out of the UK which presented itself as a kind of liberty forum. As it turned out, the host was a socialist with some tourism into libertarianism and he was anxious for a debate. I was a little annoyed with the ambush on the merits of socialism but my position on it is simple enough that anyone should be able to understand it:

  If a group of people want to form a community or collective based on socialist values then they should be allowed to do so in peace, as long as all participation is voluntary and they don’t try to harm anyone in the process.

  At first the show host appeared to agree with this idea, but his support of personal freedom proved superficial as the debate went on. His argument was “What about all the people in society that need our help, such as those that are in poverty or are disabled? Don’t we need a centralized system in place to manage these kinds of problems?”

  My response: “By all means, go and help those people if you want to help them. Just don’t try to force me to do it. I might want to help them too, but I will do it in my way, not yours.”

  And here is where every single socialist shows their true authoritarian colors – The host then argued that while I might be a good and charitable person the majority of people, in his mind, are not. And so, we must all be forced by government to contribute to society in the manner “society” has deemed appropriate.

  There you have it. Like Chomsky, this socialist was appealing to the greater good as a tool to impose HIS ideological vision onto everyone else; not to protect the lives and freedoms of individuals, which is the ONLY purview of government, but to make people participate in the way HE thinks they should participate. People must be forced to uphold social standards, and the social standards are coincidentally defined by the very people that benefit most from collectivism.

  At no point do socialists and leftists ever suggest that more individual freedom might be the best option for elevating the greater good. Their solutions always involve progressively less freedom for the individual and more power for the government, the same government which they expect to control.

  To be clear, I’m not talking about silly notions of anarchy, just constitutional protections for inherent freedoms. The political left only seeks to erode the liberties codified in the Bill of Rights, and no matter where they are on the leftist spectrum they all end up at the same terrible draconian place given the right circumstances.

  This is evident as the vax mandates spread around the world, with nations and states run by leftists now mired in oppression.  The facts are undeniable – Blue states are enslaved, red states are free.  Leftists support tyranny, conservatives support freedom.  Millions of people are trying to escape blue states; almost no one wants to relocate to one. 

  Even Noam Chomsky, a supposed anti-establishment champion, reverts to little more than a decrepit dictator rationalizing mass starvation when the opportunity to enforce vaccine mandates arises. Maybe he is feeling his mortality along with his age and fear of covid has overwhelmed his senses. I doubt it. I suspect the promise of collective power is so intoxicating to all socialists that their masks and costumes fall away and their true character emerges whether they want it to or not.

  There is not a single shred of scientific evidence to support the forced vaccination argument. There is not a single shred of proof to support the claim that an unvaxxed person is a threat to the safety of anyone else. I’ll say it again – Mandates are not laws, and even if they were they would be unconstitutional laws. There is nothing legal, rational, scientific or moral compelling me to submit to an experimental vaccine. Chomsky and his ilk have no leg to stand on.

  So, we are at an impasse. They want power over us, and we will not give it to them. Therefore, the law of the jungle takes over. The bottom line is this:

  I will not comply with your illegitimate mandates. IT-WILL-NEVER-HAPPEN. And if you think you can use leverage to force me to comply, threatening me with poverty and death through economic discrimination, then I will view your actions for what they are – An attack on my freedoms and my life. I will therefore respond in kind and eliminate the threat by any means necessary, and, I will be justified in doing so, constitutionally, rationally, scientifically and morally.

  Covid cultists like Chomsky, most of them leftists and socialists, should keep this in mind as they continue down this path. They think that the greater good is on their side but this is a fantasy driven by their own hunger for dominance. The question you need to ask yourselves is this: Do you really think your desire to force the mandates and your political ideology on me is greater than my will to stop you and remain free? Are you ready to risk death to impose the vax mandates? Because I am ready to risk death to end them.

  *  *  *

  If you would like to support the work that Alt-Market does while also receiving content on advanced tactics for defeating the globalist agenda, subscribe to our exclusive newsletter The Wild Bunch Dispatch.  Learn more about it HERE.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 11/05/2021 – 00:05

• Texas Builds Makeshift Border Wall Using Shipping Containers
  Texas Builds Makeshift Border Wall Using Shipping Containers

  The massive trade imbalance with China has left the US with an abundance of empty shipping containers piling up at warehouses and outside parking lots around ports. Sending shipping containers back to China is often a costly task for shipping companies, and many are left in the US.

  So Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, thinking on his feet, is dealing with a twin crisis of containers and his state overrun by migrants because the Biden administration has ignored the border crisis, has repurposed containers as a makeshift wall to block illegals. 

  

  According to Breitbart’s Randy Clark, dozens of shipping containers were hauled to the banks of the Rio Grande in Texas to serve as a makeshift border wall in preparation for a migrant caravan.  

  

  

  

  Last week, Abbot told Fox News’s Tucker Carlson about his strategy to use shipping containers to shore up the border:

  “And in addition to that beginning today, we begin dropping these large containers that you see on 18-wheelers, that y’all see on these ships that are going across the ocean. We’re dropping them down on locations that could be crossings that would be used by these caravans to serve as a blockade to prevent them from coming across the border. And then on top of that, if they do come across the border, the National Guard and the Texas Department of Public Safety, they are authorized to arrest any of these people who make it through out blockade efforts and put them in jail for violating a crime of criminal trespass in the state of Texas.”

  The governor said they’re placing the containers at hot spots known for illegal crossing. National Guard and Department of Public Safety troopers will be stationed behind the containers to prevent the caravan from penetrating the border. 

  On Thursday, Rep. Troy Nehls told Fox & Friends that the new border barrier was “a great idea.” 

  “It’s a tool that the governor is using to try to help slow down, curb this invasion, this invasion that we’re seeing at our southern border,” said Nehls.

  Only the Biden administration can end the migrant crisis by securing the border and enforcing stricter immigration policies. But that is not in their interest as a flood of migrants have illegally crossed into the US. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 23:45

• Plans Of A Technocratic Elite: 'The Great Reset' Is Not A Conspiracy Theory
  Plans Of A Technocratic Elite: ‘The Great Reset’ Is Not A Conspiracy Theory

  Authored by Michael Rectenwald via The Mises Institute,

  In previous installments, I introduced the Great Reset idea and treated it in terms of its economic and ideological components. In this installment, I will discuss what the Great Reset entails in terms of governance and the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4-IR), closing with remarks about the overall Great Reset project and its implications.

  

  According to Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chair of the World Economic Forum (WEF), the 4-IR follows the first, second, and third Industrial Revolutions—the mechanical, electrical, and digital, respectively. The 4-IR builds on the digital revolution, but Schwab sees the 4-IR as an exponential takeoff and convergence of existing and emerging fields, including Big Data; artificial intelligence; machine learning; quantum computing; and genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics. The consequence is the merging of the physical, digital, and biological worlds. The blurring of these categories ultimately challenges the very ontologies by which we understand ourselves and the world, including “what it means to be human.”

  The specific applications that make up the 4-R are too numerous and sundry to treat in full, but they include a ubiquitous internet, the internet of things, the internet of bodies, autonomous vehicles, smart cities, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and more.

  While Schwab and the WEF promote a particular vision for the 4-IR, the developments he announces are not his brainchildren, and there is nothing original about his formulations. Transhumanists and Singularitarians (or prophets of the technological singularity), such as Ray Kurzweil and many others, forecasted these and more revolutionary developments, .long before Schwab heralded them. The significance of Schwab and the WEF’s take on the new technological revolution is the attempt to harness it to a particular end, presumably “a fairer, greener future.”

  But if existing 4-IR developments are any indication of the future, then Schwab’s enthusiasm is misplaced, and the 4-IR is misrepresented. These developments already include internet algorithms that feed users prescribed news and advertisements and downrank or exclude banned content; algorithms that censor social media content and consign “dangerous” individuals and organizations to digital gulags; apps that track and trace covid suspects and report violators to the police; robot police with QR code scanners to identify and round up dissenters; and smart cities where everyone is a digital entity to be monitored, surveilled, and recorded, while data on their every move is collected, collated, stored, and attached to a digital identity and social credit score.

  That is, 4-IR technologies subject human beings to a technological management that makes the earlier surveillance by the National Security Agency look like child’s play. Schwab lauds future developments that will connect brains directly to the cloud, enabling the “data mining” of thought and memory, a technological mastery over experience that threatens individual autonomy and undermines any semblance of free will. The 4-IR accelerates the merging of humans and machines, resulting in a world in which all information, including genetic information, is shared and every action, thought, and unconscious motivation is known, predicted, and possibly even precluded. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World comes to mind. Yet Schwab touts brain-cloud interfaces as enhancements, as vast improvements over standard human intelligence, thus lending them an appeal not at all imaginable for soma.

  Many positive developments may come from the 4-IR, but unless it is taken out of the hands of the corporate-socialist technocrats, it will constitute a virtual prison.

  Under the Great Reset governance model, states and favored corporations form “public-private partnerships” in control of governance. The configuration yields a corporate-state hybrid largely unaccountable to the constituents of national governments.

  The cozy relationship between multinational corporations and governments has even aroused the scorn of a few left-leaning critics. They note that the governance model of the WEF represents at least the partial privatization of the UN’s Agenda 2030, with the WEF bringing corporate partners, money, and supposed expertise on the 4-IR to the table. And the WEF’s governance model extends well beyond the UN, affecting the constitution and behavior of governments worldwide. This usurpation has led political scientist Ivan Wecke to call the WEF’s governmental redesign of the world system “a corporate takeover of global governance.”

  This is true, but the obverse is also the case. The WEF model also represents the governmentalization of private industry. Under Schwab’s “stakeholder capitalism” and the multistakeholder governance model, governance is not only increasingly privatized, but also and more importantly, corporations are deputized as major additions to governments and intergovernmental bodies. The state is thereby extended, enhanced, and augmented by the addition of enormous corporate assets. These include funding directed at “sustainable development” to the exclusion of the noncompliant, as well as the use of Big Data, artificial intelligence, and 5G to monitor and control citizens. In the case of the covid vaccine regime, the state grants Big Pharma monopoly protection and indemnity from liability in exchange for a vehicle by which to expand its powers of coercion. As such, corporate stakeholders become what I have called “governmentalities”—otherwise “private” organizations wielded as state apparatuses, with no obligation to answer to pesky constituents. Since these corporations are multinational, the state essentially becomes global, whether or not a “one-world government” is ever formalized.

  In Google Archipelago, I argued that leftist authoritarianism is the political ideology and modus operandi of what I call Big Digital, and that Big Digital is the leading edge of an emerging world system. Big Digital is the communications, ideological, and technological arm of an emerging corporate socialism. The Great Reset is the name that has since been given to the project of establishing this world system.

  Just as Klaus Schwab and the WEF hoped, the covid crisis has accelerated the development of the Great Reset’s corporate-socialist statism. Developments advancing the Great Reset agenda include the Federal Reserve’s unrestrained printing of money, the subsequent inflation, the increasing taxation on everything imaginable, the increased dependence on the state, the supply chain crisis, the restrictions and job losses due to vaccine mandates, and the prospect of personal carbon allowances. Altogether, these and other such policies constitute a coordinated attack on the majority. Ironically, they also represent the “fairness” aspect of the Great Reset—if we properly understand fairness to mean leveling the economic status of the “average American” with those in less “privileged” regions. And this is one of the functions of woke ideology – to make the majority in developed countries feel unworthy of their “privileged” lifestyles and consumption patterns, which the elite are in the process of resetting to a reduced and static new normal.

  Over the past twenty-one months, the response to the covid-19 scourge has consolidated the monopolistic corporations’ grip on the economy on top, while advancing “actually-existing socialism” below. In partnership with Big Tech, Big Pharma, the legacy media, national and international health agencies, and compliant populations, hitherto “democratic” Western states are increasingly being transformed into totalitarian regimes modeled after China, seemingly overnight. I need not provide a litany of the tyranny and abuses. You can read about them on alternative news sites—until you can no longer read about them even there.

  The Great Reset, then, is not merely a conspiracy theory; it is an open, avowed, and planned project, and it is well underway. But because capitalism with Chinese characteristics, or corporate-socialist statism, lacks free markets and depends on the absence of free will and individual liberty, it is, ironically, “unsustainable,” and doomed to fail. The question is just how much suffering and distortion will be endured until it does.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 23:25

• China Tries To Quash Taiwan War Rumors Online After Citizens Start Stockpiling Food & Survival Gear
  China Tries To Quash Taiwan War Rumors Online After Citizens Start Stockpiling Food & Survival Gear

  There’s been a noticeable uptick in Western media headlines predicting looming war between China and Taiwan, and reports of preparations for a near-future mainland invasion of the autonomous democratic-run island. This especially after both US defense officials and Taiwan’s leaders recently for the first time confirmed the presence of US Marines there.

  This state of things, along with the increasingly bellicose rhetoric of some US officials and media pundits – answered by Beijing’s assertion of its “red lines” on growing US involvement in Taiwan centering on weapons sales – has fueled frenzied speculation on social media. Authorities in China are now trying to reign in the speculation of imminent war among Chinese citizens online. 

  

  But the profusion of internet rumors that wartime preparations are being made has also been fueled by Chinese state broadcasters themselves. In some places this reportedly caused citizens to begin stocking up on food and supplies.

  Bloomberg, for example, details that “Chinese social media networks have seen a flurry of chatter about a possible Taiwan crisis in recent days, seemingly fuelled by Beijing’s call for citizens to stockpile food and an unrelated message claiming to show the nation was preparing to mobilize military reserves.”

  The report underscores that “The surge came after a report by China’s state broadcaster saying that Taiwanese were hoarding their own survival supplies.”

  Ironically it also appears that President Xi Jinping’s recent tough talk – for example this past summer warning pro-independence leaders that foreign meddlers will “get their heads bashed” – has backfired to some degree as his own population is increasingly buying into hype that war is just around the corner. Bloomberg provides an example of the kind of viral content that state censors are now trying to quash:

  On Tuesday (Nov 2), the Economic Daily published a commentary urging the public “not to over read” a Ministry of Commerce statement encouraging families to stock up on some daily necessities due to supply-chain concerns. Later on Tuesday, a social media account affiliated with the official People’s Liberation Army Daily newspaper denounced the mobilisation rumours as a “vile” and “malicious fabrication.”

  “It will not only cause negative impact to the state, the military and society, it could also lead to severe consequences,” said the account, Junzhengping.

  Chinese government: We might go to war

  Chinese internet: YAY WAR YAY WAR YAY WARRRR

  Chinese government: Uhh, actually, that’s not what we meant…https://t.co/njCqJqAOuV

  — Noah Smith 🐇 (@Noahpinion) November 4, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  But as with any messaging that goes viral whether true or false, it inevitably results in furthering the rumors:

  On Wednesday morning, the Junzhengping denial was among the top-trending topics on the Weibo social media network. Still, the war talk continued to simmer, with a 63-year-old video of PLA generals singing that they “will definitely plant the flag of victory on Taiwan” getting more than 130 million views.

  The Commerce Ministry notification about ensuring enough supplies and stable prices for essential staples in supermarkets in some instances triggered hoarding and a degree of panic buying among some:

  War fears or not, there were scattered reports of runs on rice, noodles and cooking oil in some Chinese cities, according to local media. The more immediate worry for some was the possibility of neighborhood lockdowns as a COVID-19 outbreak spreads in several provinces.

  The government moved quickly to try to tamp down fears with assurances of sufficient supplies. A bright yellow sign in an aisle of a Beijing supermarket asked customers to buy reasonably and not to listen to rumors or stockpile goods.

  Other reports suggested survival gear was also flying off the shelves in some locales.

  Another fear among officials is that given Xi has lately pushed a message of “peaceful reunification” of Taiwan, while expressing the desire to win over the Taiwanese population by persuasion, online and media war rumors can only serve to polarize the situation. So it appears state media is now frantically trying to walk back a number of its own prior over-sensationalized claims regarding the tense Taiwan situation.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 23:05

• Constitution City, Est. 2021
  Constitution City, Est. 2021

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

  Brownwood, Texas, today is bustling like never before. The old hotel downtown is being renovated after sitting in decay for decades.

  The restaurants are packed. Houses are selling for 20% more than their Zillow values. The banks are experiencing a big influx of funds. New residents are pouring in from around the country. Everyone is making money. It’s a charming and happy place, except that everyone complains about the car traffic.

  That’s a nice problem.

  One year and a half ago, life was different. It was like a ghost town. The mall was empty. The shops were closed. You could not see anyone on the streets. Maybe a straggler or two. The hotels were empty. Local businesses were struggling to stay afloat using various takeout techniques and deliveries.

  It seemed like a town in its death throes. What a difference between the two!

  

  An Oasis in a World Gone Mad

  I, in fact, attended a downtown street party there just a few months ago. The lust for living was on full display. No one, not one person, wore a mask. The bars were packed. Street vendors were selling their goods. It felt like some mecca of real life in a world gone crazy. Brownwood, Texas, was determined to live again.

  Clearly the experience of death and life burned deeply in the hearts of many of the city’s primary stakeholders. It’s like they said: Never again. Now the town is not only back, but bustling, happy and beautiful again.

  The city council has just made history, as the first city in Texas to declare itself to be a “Constitutional City.”

  Constitutional City, USA

  What do they mean by “Constitution City”? It means that the government cannot and will not pass any laws that violate the Bill of Rights. This is clearly motivated as a response to the lockdowns that nearly wrecked the place.

  As a local news outlet wrote:

  The resolution does not mention COVID or the COVID vaccine but states the commissioners court “is determined to stand as a constitutional county” and recited the rights including freedom of expression, speech, association, religion, press and petition, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to protection from government overreach and the right not to be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.

  The resolution states the Brown County “recognizes, respects and upholds the First and Second Amendment rights and will use “all legal means at its disposal to oppose, within the limits of the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of Texas” any efforts to “unconstitutionally restrict” those rights.

  Lose Freedom to Gain It

  It was F.A. Hayek who wrote in 1947 that no people love freedom more than those who have more recently lost all of it. He continued that his hope was that Americans did not have to lose theirs entirely before they woke up and realized the dangerous trends of rising state power and finally stand up and say: enough.

  Sadly, we did have to lose massive amounts of freedom before that day arrived. But it is arriving. Not as quickly as we might like. Not fast enough to save the economy and the dollar, both of which are going down fast. We are headed to a recession again, not having even recovered from the last one, and the dollar is tanking relative to what we can buy with it.

  Even so, Americans are standing up for freedom finally. Here are some signs of hope:

  • The Biden administration is down 10 points underwater and the trend of his approval ratings look very bad for the White House

  • School boards all over the country are being overthrown due to tolerating lockdowns and forced masking and testing

  • New polls show a dramatic turnaround in attitudes toward government

  • It’s clear that many industries and workers are standing up to vaccine mandates

  • The airline “sickouts” have caused Southwest Airlines to back down somewhat

  • People are in the streets in Sacramento protesting the mandates

  • Alternative news sources are booming while polls show less trust for the mainstream than ever before

  • We are starting to win in the courts

  • Bitcoin just reached a new high — a clear repudiation of mainstream financial opinion.

  Wait for the Media Outcry

  Now, with this new movement toward Constitutional Cities we are seeing a real form of declaring independence. If the federal government doesn’t care, and state governors don’t care, at least cities can stand up for what we are supposed to believe in as a country.

  It’s a beautiful idea. We can hope this model will be copied all over the country.

  But let’s watch: In a matter of a few weeks, the attacks on the Constitutional Cities movement will start hitting hard. CNN will discover that some activist somewhere has a sketchy background or even attended the Jan. 6 protest in D.C. The movement will be declared “far right” and “extremist” and probably “racist” and who knows what else.

  Know this: It’s utter bunk. These are good citizens who care about liberty and freedom and swear to never again allow their cities and towns to be torn apart by fools, charlatans, liars and thieves, even if they say it has to happen because they are smart scientists who know how to handle disease. These cities are imposing a real restraint at least in rhetoric.

  And also there is a strong economic incentive to declare one’s city to be a Constitutional City. It attracts tourists and investment dollars. If you are thinking of opening a business, wouldn’t it be a safer bet to choose such a city over a place like Chicago or San Francisco? At least you could pretty much count on some resistance to lockdowns or sudden tax increases or speech controls.

  Building Back Better

  I’m particularly impressed at the movement around the First Amendment. It’s become almost banned on Facebook even to post inflation numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The other day, Zuckerberg even censored a respected economist who pointed to the known data.

  Just because government has outsourced its violations of the Bill of Rights to private companies doesn’t make it kosher. It’s nothing but a sneaky trick to get around the courts.

  Most of us have felt trapped for two years. This is what they wanted. They wanted us confused, separated, silenced and unable to find a way out. But we’ll figure it out. We are figuring it out right now.

  This is one promising path. It won’t stop the coming economic chaos but it lays a good foundation for rebuilding in the future.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 22:45

• Payrolls Preview: This One Actually Matters
  Payrolls Preview: This One Actually Matters

  October’s NFP (consensus exp. +450k) prints tomorrow morning, two days after the FOMC taper announcement on Wednesday. And due to the flexible nature of the monthly tapering, employment reports (together with inflation prints) will now be far more critical as part of the broader evolution of data, which if too divergent could serve to accelerate/decelerate the pace of tapering, not to mention their importance in gauging the road to full employment, and as a result eventual rate lift-off.

  As Newsquawk notes in its NFP preview, labor proxies have largely been constructive, with the ADP report surprising to the upside, although everyone knows about the rocky correlation between the two. Initial Jobless Claims and Continued Jobless Claims continued to show a decline to successive post-pandemic lows after some prior bumps due to Hurricane Ida. ISM business surveys continued to signal growth, with the Manufacturing employment sub-index rising further into expansionary territory, but Services declining slightly with continued high rates of turnover, albeit still above 50.0. While Challenger Layoffs saw the second consecutive M/M rise to take the level to its highest since May, the firm reported vaccine mandates as the biggest factor for October layoffs.

  WIth that in mind, here is what consensus expects when the Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the October employment situation report at 08:30EDT on November 5th:

  • Change in nonfarm Payrolls: exp. 450K, Last 194K
  • China in private nonfarm payrolls: exp. 415K, Last 317K
  • Unemployment rate: exp. 4.7%, Last 4.6%
  • Underemployment rate: exp. Last 8.5%
  • Labor force participation rate: exp. 61.8%, Last 61.6%
  • Average hourly earnings M/M:  exp. 0.4%, Last 0.6%
  • Average hourly earnings Y/Y:  exp. 4.9%, last 4.6%

  POLICY: The October jobs report comes two days after the Fed made its taper announcement. The FOMC statement said that the taper rate of USD 10bln/m and USD 5bln/m of Treasuries and MBS, respectively, could change if needed. Accordingly, an extreme jobs report in either direction could serve to be the trigger for taper adjustments. Meanwhile, Powell said he wants to see more progress on the employment rate before considering rate lift-off, but interestingly, said maximum employment could be met by the middle of next year (although Powell had no clue just what that means).

  PAYROLLS: The consensus looks for 450k nonfarm payrolls to be added to the US economy in October after 194k in September, which would be a cooler rate of growth than the three- and six-month average rates at 550k/month and 583k /month, respectively. Aggregating the nonfarm payrolls data since March 2020, 154mln Americans are employed as of September, still down by around 5mln from pre-pandemic levels.

  Goldman Sachs looks for +525k, above the consensus of +450k. As the bank writes, “after two weak months of job growth, tomorrow’s report reflects the first full month of hiring following the expiration of federal enhanced unemployment benefits. The bank’s forecast reflects improving public health, strong labor demand,and a partial education rebound as schools gradually fill positions left open at the start of the school year. On the negative side, the seasonal factors may have evolved to fit the strong October 2020 data, raising the seasonal hurdle into morrow’s report.

  MEASURES OF SLACK: The Unemployment Rate is expected at 4.7% (prev. 4.8%); Labour Force Participation previously at 61.6% vs 63.2% pre-pandemic; U6 measure of underemployment was previously at 8.5% vs 7.0% prepandemic; Employment-population ratio was previously 58.7% vs 61.1% pre-pandemic. These measures of slack will again be used to provide more insight into how Fed officials are judging labor market progress, with many in recent months noting that they are closely watching the Underemployment Rate, Participation Rate, and the Employment-Population Ratio for a better handle on the level of slack that remains in the economy. Indeed, Powell on Wednesday reiterated his view that the unemployment rate understates the shortfall in employment with ground still to be made.

  EARNINGS: Average Hourly Earnings expected at +0.4% M/M (prev. +0.6%); Average Hourly Earnings expected at +4.9% Y/Y (prev. +4.6%); Average Workweek Hours expected at 34.8hrs (prev. 34.8hrs). ADP: The ADP National Employment Report was encouraging, showing 571k jobs added in October, beating the expected +400k and a better pace than the prior +523k (revised lower from +568k). The report highlighted “Leisure and hospitality remains one of the biggest beneficiaries to the recovery, yet hiring is still heavily impacted by the trajectory of the pandemic, especially for small firms. Current bottlenecks in hiring should fade as the health conditions tied to the COVID-19 variant continue to improve, setting the stage for solid job gains in the coming months”. Note ADP’s correlation to ADP lately has been far from perfect, thus should be taken with a pinch of salt when trying to determine the strength of the BLS’ NFP. Analysts at Goldman Sachs suggest “The October ADP report is consistent with a strong pace of job gains following the end of the federal enhanced unemployment benefits, and we continue to expect nonfarm payroll growth to rebound in this Friday’s employment report”.

  INITIAL JOBLESS CLAIMS: Initial jobless claims data for the week that coincides with the BLS jobs report survey window saw claims at 291k – down from the 351k for the September jobs data survey window – where analysts said claims had fallen at a faster rate than the bump up induced from Hurricane Ida; the corresponding continuing claims data has fallen to 2.480mln in the October survey period vs 2.802mln in the September survey period. In aggregate, the data continues to point to a declining trend, with the bump in prior months seemingly fading.

  BUSINESS SURVEYS: The Services and Manufacturing ISM reports showed divergent trends again in October, with the service sector employment sub-index easing to 51.6 from 53.0, signalling growth, but at a slower rate, while the manufacturing equivalent rose for a second month, printing 52.0 from 50.2. On the manufacturing sector, ISM said companies are still struggling to meet labour-management plans, but for a second month there were modest signs of progress: “An increasing percentage of comments noted improvements regarding employment, compared to less than 5 percent in September.” It said, “an overwhelming majority of panellists indicate their companies are hiring or attempting to hire,” where 90% of comments were about seeking additional staffing, while 28% of those expressed difficulty in filling positions down from “nearly half” in September. “The increasing frequency of comments on turnover rates and retirements continued a trend that began in August,” ISM said. Meanwhile, in the services sector, employment activity remained in expansionary territory for a fourth straight month; respondents noted, “Staffing and turnover remain significant challenges” and “Continued difficulty filling positions, especially front-line.” Also, “Drivers are in short supply; rate of turnover has increased.”

  CHALLENGER LAYOFFS: Job cuts rose to 22.8k in October, the highest since May, from 17.9k in September, marking the second consecutive M/M rise from the Challenger report. 22% of those cuts were attributed to vaccine mandate refusals. Challenger writes, “Last month, the majority of cuts (5,796) were attributed to plant, store, and unit closing. Workers’ refusing to comply with vaccine mandates accounted for 5,071 cuts in October.” It adds, “Since June, when vaccines were widely available to adults, 6,843 workers have been cut or left their jobs for this reason. It is currently the 10th highest reason for job cuts this year.” On seasonal hiring, “Through October, Challenger has tracked 939,300 seasonal hiring plans from Retailers, Transportation, and Warehousing companies, up 11% from the 849,350 announced during the 2020 holiday season.” Challenger concludes, “It is the most since the firm began tracking these direct announcements in 2012.”

  ARGUING FOR A BETTER-THAN-EXPECTED REPORT

  • End of federal enhanced unemployment benefits. The expiration of federal benefits in some states boosted job-finding rates over the summer, and all remaining such programs expired on September 5. As shown in Exhibit 1, the microdata indicated a cumulative 6pp boost to job-finding probabilities for workers losing $300 top-up payments and a 12pp boost for workers losing all benefits. 4.2mnindividuals stopped receiving unemployment compensation between early September and the October survey week, and we are assuming a boost to October job growth on the order of 250k-400k from this channel.

  

  • Public health. The Delta wave coincided with a late-summer slowdown in job growth, with leisure and hospitality employment growth slowing sharply in August and September (see Exhibit 2). Covid infection rates peaked just before the September survey period and steadily declined over the following month, and restaurant seatings on Open Table have also rebounded (see same Exhibit). Leisure and hospitality job growth picked up from the +56k average pace of the last two reports to around 200-250k in October. This would still be well below the ~400k monthly pace of June and July. Relatedly, the number of workers on unpaid leave increased by 742k cumulatively in August and September (sa by GS), some of whom likely returned to work in time for the October survey period.

  

  • Big Data. High-frequency data on the labor market were mixed but generally encouraging between the September and October survey weeks. Four of the five measures tracked indicate an above-consensus payroll gain (see Exhibit 3). However, the Homebase data that directionally flagged last month’s payroll miss indicates a smaller rise

  

  • ADP. Private sector employment in the ADP report increased by 571k in October, above consensus expectations for a 400k gain and consistent with strong growth in the ADP panel. Employer surveys. The employment components of business surveys generally increased in October. The Goldman services survey employment tracker increased 0.2pt to 54.6 and the manufacturing survey employment tracker increased 1.4pt to 59.0. The Goldman Sachs Analyst Index (GSAI) increased 4.4pt to 72.9 in October, and the employment component rose 2.1pt to a record-high of 74.0.
  • Job availability. The Conference Board labor differential—the difference between the percent of respondents saying jobs are plentiful and those saying jobs are hard to get—increased to 45.0, the highest level since 2000. JOLTS job openings decreased by 659k in August to 10.4mn but remain significantly higher than the pre-pandemic record. Jobless claims. Initial jobless claims fell during the October payroll month, averaging 320k per week vs. 339k in September. Continuing claims in regular state programs decreased 572k from survey week to survey week.

  ARGUING FOR A WEAKER THAN EXPECTED REPORT:

  • Seasonality. The October seasonal factors may have evolved unfavorably due to the crisis—specifically by fitting to last October’s reopening-driven job surge (privatepayrolls +954k mom sa). Coupled with above-trend October growth in several of the years leading up to the crisis, the seasonal factors may evolve to offset some of the strength we forecast in the BLS employment panel in tomorrow’s report.
  • Vaccine mandates. The vaccine mandates announced by the Biden administration non September 9 may have weighed on October job growth in healthcare and government. But while the mandates apply to roughly 25mn unvaccinated workers,the deadline for compliance is generally not until early January. Accordingly, any payroll growth drag is more likely to materialize in future reports.

  NEUTRAL/MIXED FACTORS:

  • School reopening. Education payrolls declined 180k in September (public and private), despite all 100 of the largest school districts being open for in-person learning, as some janitors and support staff did not return for the fall school year,perhaps due to labor supply constraints. While schools will eventually fill these open positions, the start-of-year catalyst for a large rise in education jobs has passed, and Goldman assumes only around 50k of job creation in these industries in tomorrow’s report (mom sa).
  • Job cuts. Announced layoffs reported by Challenger, Gray & Christmas rebounded 18% month-over-month in October after increasing by 12% in September (sa by GS).Nonetheless, layoffs remain near the three-decade low on this measure

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 22:25

• Ron Paul: Resist The Unique Patient Identifier!
  Ron Paul: Resist The Unique Patient Identifier!

  Authored by Ron Paul via The Mises Institute,

  If people who torture animals are psychopaths, then what are government officials who use taxpayer dollars to fund animal torture? Many are asking this question in the wake of revelations that the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci—high priest of the COVID cult—funded medical “research” involving the torture of puppies. This led “Fire Fauci” to trend on Twitter, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) to call for his resignation.

  

  The puppy torture story was followed by disclosures that the federal government funded the testing of experimental AIDS vaccines on orphans. Many of the orphans used as human guinea pigs subsequently died, and nurses who assisted in these experiments reported that many children got sick immediately after receiving the vaccines.

  Testing dangerous drugs on orphans and torturing puppies in the name of “science” is certainly shocking, but is it really surprising that government would fund these types of activities? What is the difference between using orphans and puppies for cruel experiments in the name of protecting public health and killing innocent children in drone attacks in the name of stopping terrorism?

  Ironically, these revelations come when Congress is on the verge of allowing the federal bureaucracy to destroy what remains of our medical privacy. Both the Senate and House versions of the Labor, Education, and Health and Human Services Appropriations bill remove the prohibition on the development of a “unique patient identifier.”

  The prohibition on funding for the unique patient identifier, which I sponsored, has been in place since 1998. The push to allow the government to force every American to obtain a unique patient identifier is being justified as a means to efficiently monitor Americans’ “contact and immunization” status.

  When I began fighting the unique patient ID in the 1990s, my opponents denied that medical identifiers would make it impossible to ensure confidentiality of medical records. Now, they are saying we should support medical identifiers because they allow government officials, employers, schools, airlines, and even stores and restaurants to discover what, if any, vaccinations or other medical treatments we have or have not received. The result of the identifier will be a medical caste system, where those who refuse to follow the mandates or advice of the “experts” are denied opportunities to work, receive an education, or even go to church or enjoy a night out on the town.

  A unique patient identifier will weaken health care by making individuals reluctant to share personal information—such as drug and alcohol use and past sexual history—with health care providers. It will also discourage sick individuals from seeking medical care for fear their physicians will discover they are unvaccinated, smoke, are overweight, or engage in other unapproved behaviors.

  A unique medical ID could also be tied to government records of gun purchases. Someone with “too many” guns could be labeled a potential mental health risk and harassed by law enforcement. This is especially likely if the gun grabbers are successful in their push to enact “red flag” laws in every state.

  Fortunately, there is a growing resistance to vaccines and other mandates. This resistance is unlikely to passively accept a federally-issued unique patient identifier. If those of us who know the truth take advantage of the opportunity presented by the resistance to COVID tyranny, we can not only stop the scheme to force every American to obtain a “unique patient identifier” but end all government control of our health care.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 22:05

• Duke Energy Warns Of Higher Power Prices As Tight Coal/Gas Supplies Loom This Winter
  Duke Energy Warns Of Higher Power Prices As Tight Coal/Gas Supplies Loom This Winter

  Duke Energy Corporation warned Thursday that coal and natural gas supplies would be tight this winter, resulting in higher power prices for customers. Duke operates a diverse mix of power plants – including coal, hydro, natural gas, nuclear, solar, and wind – and battery storage facilities across several regions and states, including the Carolinas, Florida, and Midwest. 

  Duke Energy CFO Steve Young said coal and natural gas prices are the highest since 2014, and these two essential commodities are in short supply. 

  “It’s been a while,” since we’ve seen commodity prices like this.

  “The winter of 2014, we had a very cold polar vortex winter, and we saw spiking of gas prices,” Young said, who was quoted by Bloomberg on Thursday. 

  He noted the Duke has adequate coal and gas reserves for this fall/winter but stressed a shortage of supplies in the overall commodity market has forced prices higher. 

  

  Young said its fossil fuel power generation plants would pass on higher costs to customers. Higher power prices will be another blow to consumers who have already had their real wages crushed by soaring food, gasoline, and shelter costs. 

  “Regions that rely more on gas or coal for heat and electricity will see rates increase more than regions where a greater proportion of power comes from nuclear, hydropower or renewable energy,” he said.

  

  The cause of the energy crunch is due to the rising global demand for fossil fuel as the global energy transition to alternative power sources, such as solar and wind, has been nothing short of a disaster. 

  Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources, the largest U.S. exporter of fuel, also warned about coal supply constraints. He said power companies are already “discussing possible grid blackouts this winter.” 

  Last month, NOAA’s 2021 Winter Outlook was published. For the second consecutive winter, it outlined that La Nina conditions are emerging and will impact weather across the U.S.

  “Consistent with typical La Nina conditions during winter months, we anticipate below-normal temperatures along portions of the northern tier of the U.S. while much of the South experience above-normal temperatures,” the report said. 

  Heating demand across the country is rising as temps drop. 

  

  In short, the millions of Americans that rely on Duke for power could be slapped with higher power bills if cold weather is seen. More evidence that inflation is not as “transitory” as the Federal Reserve wants everyone to believe. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 21:45

• More Americans Now Oppose Than Support 'Black Lives Matter', New Poll Finds
  More Americans Now Oppose Than Support ‘Black Lives Matter’, New Poll Finds

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  A new poll has found that more Americans now oppose Black Lives Matter than support it for the first time in over three years.

  

  Support for Black Lives Matter spiked following the police killing of George Floyd, but after months of violent rioting throughout the summer of 2020, it has consistently fallen.

  A new survey by Civiqs reveals that 44 per cent of Americans oppose the far-left organization compared to 43 per cent who still support it.

  

  Driving the turndown in sentiment towards the group is the views of Independents and Hispanic/Latino voters.

  

  

  The summer 2020 riots, described by news outlets like CNN as “mostly peaceful,” were the most damaging in U.S. history, with total insurance industry payouts exceeding $2 billion.

  An essay written by academics Jennifer Chudy and Hakeem Jefferson published by the New York Times earlier this year analyzed how support for BLM soared to +20% in mid-2020 but rapidly dropped to only +5% – which is where it was in mid-2019.

  Now that number has entered negative territory despite BLM enjoying massive widespread media endorsement and consistent backing from celebrities and cultural institutions.

  As we highlighted back in July, the deep state appears to be concerned that more Americans are learning the truth about the extremist group.

  It was revealed that the Pentagon is working with a contractor to track web searches that it describes as indicators of “white supremacy,” citing the phrase “the truth about black lives matter” as one example.

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 21:25

• Biden Approves $650 Million Missile Sale To Saudis After Earlier Vowing To End War In Yemen
  Biden Approves $650 Million Missile Sale To Saudis After Earlier Vowing To End War In Yemen

  Despite the prior stated intent by the Biden White House to see an immediate end to the war in Yemen, the administration on Thursday announced that it’s approving a new $650 million sale of air-to-air missiles (AMRAAM) and related equipment to Saudi Arabia.

  “The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia of AIM-120C Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and related equipment for an estimated cost of $650 million,” a Pentagon statement announced. Specifically it includes up to 280 air-to-air missiles.

  What’s been described as the “forgotten war” in Yemen has raged since 2015, with for much of that period the Pentagon providing direct assistance to Saudi-UAE coalition airstrikes against Yemeni Houthi rebels backed by Iran. Prior US involvement in the Saudi-waged war grew increasingly controversial, given the high civilian death toll – amid a total estimated death toll of over 130,000 Yemenis killed. 

  

  Further the United Nations within the past two years has designated the conflict “the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.” Recall that back in February Biden earned bipartisan praise for the following foreign policy “promises”:

  In his first major foreign policy address, President Joe Biden on Feb. 4 declared his commitment to “end the war in Yemen,” which he called a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.” The president announced that the US would stop assisting all “offensive operations” in that impoverished country and halt all “relevant arms sales” to the Saudi Arabia/UAE-led coalition that is waging war there. 

  In describing the rationale for the new massive weapons sale to the kingdom, the Thursday Biden administration statement characterized the ‘defensive’ nature of the systems:

  We’ve seen an increase in cross-border attacks against Saudi Arabia over the past year. Saudi AIM-120C missiles, deployed from Saudi aircraft, have been instrumental in intercepting these attacks that also US forces at risk and over 70,000 US citizens in the Kingdom at risk.

  There have been multiple missile and drone attacks launched out of Yemen over the past year, with the Iran-backed Houthis showing increased sophistication and reach. 

  Astoundingly, Pentagon also claimed that the Saudi kingdom is a “force for progress” in the Middle East: “This proposed sale will support US foreign policy and national security of the United States by helping to improve the security of a friendly country that continues to be an important force for political and economic progress in the Middle East,” it said.

  .@StateDept authorizes a proposed Foreign Military Sale #FMS to #SaudiArabia for their purchase of up to 280 AIM-120C-7/C-8 Advanced Medium Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) and related equipment for an estimated cost of up to $650 million. #FMSUpdate — https://t.co/yRFGtkrFPC pic.twitter.com/TsoBgJrbSg

  — Political-Military Affairs, US Dept of State (@StateDeptPM) November 4, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Notably the weapons transfer will include medium-range missiles for Saudi fighter jets, which will likely directly aid in the continued Saudi bombing of Yemen as it continues to lay siege the country – further contributing to the humanitarian crisis of famine, disease, and lack of basic medicines. 

  Prior analysis we featured days ago described described that there’s currently a diplomatic push to get a ceasefire in place, and ultimately end the war. While this would get the Saudis out of the negative coverage of the war, the kingdom seems to be focused on what they can get out of the US for heading down this path.

  NEW: Biden is selling Saudi Arabia $650 million in missiles, calls the move “fully consistent” with ending the war in Yemen. pic.twitter.com/UPBwEpMYtz

  — Akbar Shahid Ahmed (@AkbarSAhmed) November 4, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  So it appears the US administration is now seeking to justify its freshly approving the new missile deal by attempting it to link it to conditions that would end the war in Yemen. Though there doesn’t seem to be anything Riyadh has firmly or definitively agreed to just yet.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 21:05

• California Forced To Embrace Natural Gas
  California Forced To Embrace Natural Gas

  Authored by Irina Slav via OilPrice.com,

  Severe droughts and wildfires this year have pushed California to turn to natural gas in order to secure its energy supplies this winter, Reuters has reported, with the California Public Utility Commission to vote this week on expanding the gas storage facility in Los Angeles.

  

  Droughts severely cut hydropower generation in the state, while wildfires compromised electricity imports, which are a big part of California’s energy mix. The state also has plans to shut down four gas-fired plants and its nuclear plant, and last month the PUC ordered utilities to start buying renewable power and battery storage, the Wall Street Journal reported.

  “While the companies are moving quickly to contract for power, the California Energy Commission and the state’s grid operator have recently expressed concern that the purchases may not be enough to prevent electricity shortages in coming summers,” the report said.

  Per the Reuters report, also this week, regulators will vote on increasing the amount of gas stored at the biggest gas storage facility in California – Aliso Canyon.

  The facility is problematic: six years ago, a months-long leak made headlines, and there have been suggestions that it must be shut down.

  The problems with Aliso Canyon have contributed to California’s tight gas supplies along with a lack of pipelines. But, according to PUC Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves, a small boost in capacity “will allow us to get through this winter while we continue our progress toward planning how to reduce or eliminate our use of Aliso Canyon by 2027 or 2035, or any time in between.”

  Until that happens, the planned closure of gas-fired plants could be delayed yet again.

  Initially, they were scheduled for retirement last year, but fears of blackouts in the evenings, when demand rises but solar power output declines, prompted a postponement. Now, one will be shut down this year and the other three in 2023.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 20:45

• Thousands Of Active-Duty Air Force Members Miss Deadline For COVID Shots 
  Thousands Of Active-Duty Air Force Members Miss Deadline For COVID Shots 

  The Pentagon announced a vaccine mandate for military personnel across all armed service branches at the end of August. Many of them have complied with the mandate, but two months later, at least 8,500 active-duty members of the Air Force and Space Force are in non-compliance and risk being kicked out of the military, according to AP News. 

  As of Wednesday, the Air Force has 326,000 active-duty members of the Air Force and Space Force, with 95.9% fully vaccinated and 96.9% with at least one shot. Tuesday was the deadline for active-duty members to be vaxxed. 

  

  Around 8,500 service members had not been vaxxed as of Tuesday. A total of 800 had “verbally refused,” 2,753 had not started the vaccination process, and 4,933 have pending religious exemptions. 

  “Over the next 30 days, the Department of the Air Force will review requests for medical exemptions and religious accommodations,” the service said.

  The hard part comes as the service will begin to discipline airmen and guardians for non-compliance. 

  “Commanders retain the full range of disciplinary options available to them under law and policy, some of which includes issuing administrative paperwork, imposing nonjudicial punishment, or referring court-martial charges,” the Air Force said.

  Already, the service has discharged about 40 people from basic military training and technical training for refusing to be vaxxed. 

  Each branch of the military decided on different deadlines. The Air Force has the earliest deadlines. 

  Navy Seals were informed a little more than a month ago that they wouldn’t be deployed if they refused the jab. 

  Thousands of servicemen and women don’t want the jab because of the same beliefs of millions of unvaccinated Americans: They believe in natural immunity.

  As for the Air Force, what might happen next is a mass expulsion of non-vaxxed service members. There was no word on what career fields the un-vaxxed were in. If some are pilots, especially ones operating stealth jets and bombers, the overreaching vaxx mandate could jeopardize America’s readiness for war. 

  We wonder how many active-duty military members will just end up quitting over the mandate? 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 20:25

• Senate Bill Would Give Taiwan $3 Billion In US Military Aid Annually
  Senate Bill Would Give Taiwan $3 Billion In US Military Aid Annually

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) introduced a piece of legislation on Tuesday that would authorize the Pentagon to give Taiwan $3 billion in military aid each year from 2023 through 2027.

  The Arm Taiwan Act of 2021 would supply Taiwan with weapons and training “to accelerate Taiwan’s deployment of asymmetric defense capabilities required to deter or, if necessary, defeat an invasion by the People’s Republic of China.”

  

  The $3 billion would be conditional on Taiwan investing a matching amount of funds, boosting its military budget, and implementing “defense reforms.” Despite all the hype around the idea of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, the island’s military budget is a fraction of Washington’s.

  For 2022, Taiwan unveiled a military budget worth $16.8 billion, or 2.1 percent of the island’s GDP, compared with the 3.5 percent GDP the US spends on its military each year. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen has set a goal of eventually increasing the military budget to 3 percent of the GDP.

  Even if Taiwan eventually spends 3 percent of its GDP on its military, the aid Hawley proposed would still be a sizeable chunk of Taipei’s overall budget. “We should do everything in our power to help Taiwan urgently strengthen its defenses,” Hawley said in a statement on the bill.

  The US hasn’t had a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan since 1979, when Washington severed diplomatic relations with Taipei to recognize Beijing. But arms sales to the island continued through the decades and have increased in recent years.

  Hawley’s legislation is just the latest from China hawks looking to put more support behind Taiwan. Republicans in the House and Senate have introduced the Taiwan Invasion Prevention Act, which would give the president war powers to defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion, and some Democrats are in favor of the idea despite the clear risk of nuclear war.

  * * *

  Additionally, some brief commentary from Rabobank:

  In the background, US Senator Hawley just introduced the ‘Arm Taiwan Act’, to pledge $3bn a year for asymmetric defense capabilities on the proviso that Taiwan matches that spending in kind. It may well not pass Congress, but it shows how US-China tensions continue to escalate. Likewise, as Nikkei Asia reported it yesterday: 

  U.S. GENERAL ANALYSIS | TAIWAN OK FOR 6-24 MONTHS

  China is unlikely to try to seize Taiwan in the next couple of years, even as its military develops capabilities that would enable forcibly retaking the self-ruled island, he said.https://t.co/2Hz4LEshMU

  — Nikkei Asia (@NikkeiAsia) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “US GENERAL ANALYSIS – TAIWAN OK FOR 6-24 MONTHS”, reassuringly adding, “China is unlikely to try to seize Taiwan in the next couple of years, even as its military develops capabilities that would enable forcibly retaking the self-ruled island.” Normal times for markets, clearly. At least for six months anyway.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 20:05

• La Nina Sparks "Cold Wave" Across China As CCP Tells Households To Stockpile Food 
  La Nina Sparks “Cold Wave” Across China As CCP Tells Households To Stockpile Food 

  China Meteorological Administration (CMA) warned Thursday of a cold blast to sweep across the country from northwestern to southeastern China due to a La Nina weather event. 

  Xue Jianjun, deputy director of CMA, said: “The cold air will bring a plunge in temperature nationwide compared with mid-October. The cold wave came from west Siberia which was then enhanced by cold air from the North Pole.” 

  “Heavy snow or rain will take over the Northeast and North China and the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, and farmers there should store corns outdoors ahead of the precipitation,” Jianjun said.

  CMA warned last month that a La Nina weather pattern would bring colder weather to the country. The timing of the cooler air is problematic amid an energy crisis that has resulted in nationwide power rationings. 

  Beijing understood ahead of time La Nina would bring colder weather. It ordered the country’s top state-owned energy companies to secure coal supplies for this winter at all costs in September. 

  State-run news outlet Xinhua News Agency said, “the possibility of phased extreme and strong cooling events is high.” 

  Bloomberg’s mean temperature forecast for China shows a deep dive in temps this week. Temps will remain well under a 30-year average through mid-December. 

  

  For some context, a 2008 La Nina event unleashed a devastating blow of snow and freezing weather that caused deaths and damage to crops, affecting 20 provinces. 

  So it now makes sense why the Ministry of Commerce told households Monday to stock up on food in case of emergencies, mainly because it expects food shortages. 

  China could be in for a world of trouble as colder weather will continue to strain energy and food supplies, opening up the chance for a winter of discontent among its citizens. 

  On the bright side, La Nina could be good news for Beijing to host the Winter Olympics in February.  

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 19:45

• Depleted US Oil Inventories Leave Market Vulnerable To Shocks
  Depleted US Oil Inventories Leave Market Vulnerable To Shocks

  By John Kemp, Reuters energy analyst and columnist

  U.S. petroleum consumption has returned to pre-pandemic levels as businesses have reopened and internal road and air travel has resumed, but production and refining are lagging behind, which has depleted stocks. 

  

  Last week, the total volume of petroleum products supplied to the domestic market averaged 20 million barrels per day, essentially the same as the pre-pandemic five-year seasonal average for 2015-2019.

  Of the major fuels, volumes of gasoline and distillate supplied are running at or marginally above pre-pandemic rates, while jet fuel is still somewhat below, reflecting continued problems in the aviation industry. But the volume of crude processed by refineries has been running roughly 5% below pre-pandemic rates, putting downward pressure on inventories of refined fuels.

  By the end of last week, gasoline stocks were 5 million barrels below their pre-pandemic seasonal average while distillate stocks were 6 million barrels below (“Weekly petroleum status report”, EIA, Nov. 3).

  

  Domestic crude production also remains well below pre-pandemic levels, which has resulted in an even stronger drawdown in crude inventories.

  Commercial crude inventories ended last week 18 million barrels (4%) below the pre-pandemic average with the most severe shortage concentrated at Cushing, where stocks were down 25 million barrels (48%).

  

  The acute shortage at Cushing, which is the delivery point for the NYMEX crude futures contract, helped push nearby futures prices into their second-steepest backwardation in the last decade.

  

  More broadly, total stocks of crude and products outside the strategic petroleum reserve had fallen to their lowest level since 2014 (https://tmsnrt.rs/3whzjLX).

  

  But there are some tentative signs the supply situation is stabilizing: deficits in both crude and products inventories to the pre-pandemic five-year average have narrowed slightly since late September.

  Likely in response, WTI futures prices for deliveries in December 2021 have been trending gently downwards since Oct. 26 and the six-month calendar spread has been softening since Oct. 29, though it is too early to determine whether this marks a turning point or simply a temporary pullback.

  

  The overall supply situation remains tight. Depleted inventories mean there are few shock absorbers to cope with any unexpected interruption in output or stronger than anticipated growth in consumption.

  

  At this point, supply problems or unexpected strength in demand could result in sharp price increases because there is no slack left to absorb them in the short term, unless OPEC+ can be persuaded to increase its output faster.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 19:25

• US Toymaker Warns Shortages Could Rapidly Transform Into Gluts
  US Toymaker Warns Shortages Could Rapidly Transform Into Gluts

  Some US companies have switched their production model from just-in-time (JIT) to just-in-case inventory (JICI), a more suitable model in today’s challenging supply chain environment. JICI allows companies to store more inventory and will help ensure future orders are filled. But a new problem is emerging with JICI, one where companies might order too much merchandise and spark gluts. 

  “Customers are just flinging crazy orders right now, so it’s hard to determine the real level of demand,” Ryan Gunnigle, CEO of Kids2, an Atlanta-based toy company, told Reuters. He said a top risk to his businesses this year is overordering toys for the holiday season, resulting in high inventories once the supply chain eases. 

  

  Companies, with manufacturing plants in China and elsewhere, have adjusted to JICI because they worry about running out of goods before stocks can be replenished. This creates the problem called the “bullwhip effect.” 

  Gunnigle said a decline in shipping container prices is one of the first signs of easing supply chain issues. We pointed out on Oct. 4 that container rates between the US and China hit a wall of resistance. 

  “We’re starting to see things flow a little bit easier,” he said, adding that “curve balls keep coming.” 

  One of the latest disruptions has been the energy crunch in China which Gunnigle said he recently learned one of his factories was halted due to power issues. He also noted the cost of plastics and other materials have gone through the roof. 

  Gunnigle noted his company doubled down in on China production with a new factory complex while other companies have exited the country and set up shop elsewhere. He said this has helped with lead times as opposed to competitors. 

   “I think our response time has been a lot better than our competitors because of that,” he said, noting that as early as May, Toys2 added up to two-and-half months to the time it expected to receive goods from China – on top of the normal average of 70 days.

  “We’ve really padded our lead times,” he said. “Not just in manufacturing – but in our estimates of the time it takes to get to the port, get things on boats, time to unload the boats.”

  Gunnigle said he is carefully observing the risk of oversupply: 

  “There’s a lot of inventory in the pipeline,” he said. “I just want to make sure we don’t get stuck with too much.”

  He warned that increased congestion continues to pile up at Southern California ports, and bottlenecks may worsen in China by the end of this year or early next, “because containers on the West Coast and East Coast are not being returned to China fast enough to replenish goods coming from China to support Q1 demand.”

  Ordering too much could be the next big headache for US companies if supply chain stress continues to ease. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 19:05

• All Of The Talking Heads Are Wrong About Why The Democrats Lost Virginia
  All Of The Talking Heads Are Wrong About Why The Democrats Lost Virginia

  Authored by Michael Snyder via TheMostImportantNews.com,

  The corporate media seemed absolutely shocked by what happened on Tuesday night.  But I was not shocked one bit.  In fact, anyone with any common sense at all should have seen it coming.  Sadly, none of the talking heads on television that I saw were willing to admit why the Democrats really lost Virginia.  Some of the analysts said things that were true, but none of them addressed the main issue.  For example, CNN’s Van Jones admitted that Democrats “are coming across as annoying and offensive”, and that was certainly a truthful statement.  But that isn’t why Democrats lost.  Ultimately, the real reason why they lost in a state where they usually win is incredibly simple.

  

  Voters are moved by things that affect them personally more than anything else.  “It’s the economy, stupid” was a slogan that was invented by Clinton campaign strategist James Carville all the way back in 1992.  If people believe that voting for a particular political party is going to improve their ability to make a living, that political party is going to get a lot of votes.  Alternatively, if people believe that voting for a particular political party is going to hurt their ability to make a living, that political party is going to lose a lot of votes.

  Joe Biden made a catastrophic political error when he went after people’s jobs.  Countless Americans have already lost jobs due to various mandates, and approximately 80 million American workers will be covered by the big OSHA mandate that is about to go into effect.

  Perhaps Biden and his minions thought that they would just be hurting conservatives with these mandates, but that isn’t true at all.  Vast numbers of independents and Democrats are also refusing to comply with the mandates, and many of them are extremely angry.

  Let me give you an example.  In Kansas, the head of a local union district is very upset that close to half of the workers at his company could potentially lose their jobs…

  In Wichita, Kansas, nearly half of the roughly 10,000 employees at aircraft companies Textron Inc and Spirit AeroSystems remain unvaccinated against COVID-19, risking their jobs in defiance of a federal mandate, according to a union official.

  “We’re going to lose a lot of employees over this,” said Cornell Adams, head of the local Machinists union district. Many workers did not object to the vaccines as such, he said, but were staunchly opposed to what they see as government meddling in personal health decisions.

  Just reading those two paragraphs, it would be easy to come to the conclusion that Adams is probably a Republican.

  But he’s not.

  He is actually a Democrat, and he says that the Democrats will “never get another vote from me”…

  A life-long Democrat, Adams said he would no longer vote for the party.

  “They’ll never get another vote from me and I’m telling the workers here the same thing.”

  Did Biden and his minions actually think that countless independents and Democrats would forgive them for ruining their careers?

  If they would have just left people alone, they would still be in control in Virginia, but instead election night was a “clean sweep” for Republicans.

  And unless the Biden administration reverses course, the 2022 midterms will be a national bloodbath for the Democratic Party.

  When asked about the slaughter in Virginia, Biden mentioned a lot of factors, but he didn’t bring up the mandates at all…

  “People are upset and uncertain about a lot of things,” Biden said, “from COVID, to school, to jobs, to a whole range of things – and the cost of a gallon of gasoline. And so, if I’m able to pass and sign into law my ‘Build Back Better’ initiative, I’m in a position where you’re going to see a lot of those things ameliorated quickly and swiftly. So that has to be done.”

  Asked what Democrats need to do to respond to Republican attacks over critical race theory and other cultural issues, Biden said, “We should produce for the American people.”

  Some of the points he made are valid.

  Without a doubt, Americans are annoyed that the price of gasoline has become so painful…

  Gas prices have surged to a seven-year high of $3.40 a gallon nationally and are flirting with $4 in Nevada, Washington State and Oregon.

  Bank of America is now predicting that Brent crude oil, which drives gas prices, will zoom to $120 a barrel by June 2022. That’s 45% higher than current levels.

  Needless to say, the new global energy crisis which has suddenly erupted means that the price of gasoline is only going to go higher.

  And it is also true that Americans are frustrated with the worst supply chain crisis in our history.  The vast piles of cargo that are just sitting around in southern California have proven to be very tempting targets for thieves…

  “The more that the supply chain in general is backed up, the more cargo you’re going to have sitting. And that creates a bigger opportunity for thefts,” said Scott Cornell, a crime and theft specialist at insurance company Travelers, according to CBS MoneyWatch.

  Thieves made off with more than $5 million worth of goods as a result of so-called supply-chain theft in California during the third quarter of 2021, a surge of about 42 percent from a year ago, according to cargo theft recovery and prevention network CargoNet.

  The debacle in Afghanistan, the crisis on the southern border, and the rate at which the national debt is exploding are also factors that have weighed on Biden’s approval ratings.

  But Biden and his fellow Democrats could have survived all of those things if they had just left people’s jobs alone.

  In recent weeks, we have seen marches, demonstrations and protests all over the nation because of the mandates.

  Sadly, the talking heads on television just can’t admit that the mandates are backfiring on an absolutely massive scale.

  In the months ahead, countless more Americans will be forced out of their jobs thanks to the mandates, and this will set the stage for so many of the things that I have been warning about.

  If the Democrats want to avoid a complete wipeout during the 2022 midterm elections, they should literally beg Biden to end the mandates immediately.

  But they aren’t going to do that.

  They are literally committing political suicide, and they could potentially be creating fertile ground for a new third party to emerge by 2024.

  *  *  *

  It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “7 Year Apocalypse” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 18:45

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Tesla Is Officially Starting To Open Its Charging Network To Other EVs
  Tesla Is Officially Starting To Open Its Charging Network To Other EVs

  For the first time ever, Tesla is going to be opening its charging network to other electric vehicles. 

  The experiment will begin at 10 locations in the Netherlands, Tesla said earlier this week. Drivers of non-Tesla EVs will be able to access Superchargers through the Tesla app, Reuters reported this week. 

  As non-Tesla drivers use the sites, Tesla will be monitoring them for congestion, the report says.

  The Superchargers will be open to other EVs that use the Combined Charging System that is in use by automakers like BMW and Volkswagen. Daimler and Ford also use the same standard.

  

  Tesla uses the same standard in Europe, which would help the automaker extend its program if it is successful. 

  Charging for non-Tesla customers will include extra costs that will go toward supporting different vehicles and infrastructure/site adjustments, Reuters reported. Tesla will allow prices to be discounted for those who sign up for charging memberships. 

  Tesla commented: “This move directly supports our mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

  In total, Tesla operates 25,000 Superchargers worldwide that ostensibly could wind up participating in the project, should the pilot program in the Netherlands go well. 

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 02:45

• Coal Keeps Lights On At COP26 As Low Wind Strikes Again
  Coal Keeps Lights On At COP26 As Low Wind Strikes Again

  By John Constable of NetZeroWatch

  The UK’s failing renewable strategy is a national embarrassment. Critically low wind power, for nearly the whole of yesterday, resulted in extremely high prices, with the two remaining coal units at Drax offering to saving the day at £4,000/MWh, nearly 100 times the wholesale price normal before the current crisis started, with many other fossil fuel generators also riding to the rescue at staggering prices.

  Indeed, yesterday, 3 November, saw a new record for the total daily cost of balancing the GB electricity grid. The previous record of £38 million, twenty times the current daily average, was smashed by a margin of £6 million, with the new record standing at £44.7m.

  The causes are easy to identify from the Balancing Mechanism Reporting Service’s own chart of the Transmission System fuel mix. Wind power, the dark blue bars, was extremely low for most of the day, with a minimum of only 1 GW, under 5% of its capacity.

  

  Minimum wind generation coincided neatly with peak demand, and as a result system prices reached stunning levels, with a maximum of just over £4,000 a megawatt hour, nearly 100 times the wholesale price normal before the current crisis started, as can be seen in this BMRS chart:

  

  These prices brought coal and gas back on to the system to save the day, but emergency measures are expensive, and the cost to consumers and the wider economy was little short of horrifying.

  When these remaining fossil fuel generators are no longer on the system the costs of securing supply will rise still further. In fact, batteries and hydrogen storage on the scale required are very unlikely to be built in the time required, and have severe environmental downsides that mean they may never be built at all. And even if actually built, the costs of balancing the system with these technologies will make yesterday’s record look like a bargain. Grid balancing expenditures in the UK are already ten times their pre-wind and solar levels; in the future they will rise still further, consuming a significant fraction of national wealth.

  The UK climate strategy is all but entirely committed to renewables and it isn’t working. With the best will in the world, and however much they care about climate change, neither individual households nor the wider economy can stand these costs. Needless to say, such problems are in fact well understood in other parts of the world, which is why neither China nor India is following us down the wind and solar route. The costs are economically destabilising.

  Fortunately, there is an alternative; unwind the renewables failure, and put the UK firmly back on an engineerable Gas to Nuclear strategy, as described by Dr Capell Aris and the present author in their paper, Realism or Utopianism? A proposal for the reform of the Net Zero Policy.

  Tyler Durden
  Thu, 11/04/2021 – 02:00

• Predators With Badges: The Sex Traffickers On America's Police Forces
  Predators With Badges: The Sex Traffickers On America’s Police Forces

  Authored by John W. Whitehead & Nisha Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “Sexual predation by police officers happens far more often than people in the business are willing to admit.”

  – Former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper

  We are a nation on the brink of a nervous breakdown.

  Undeniably, the blowback from COVID-19 lockdowns and mandates continues to reverberate around the country, impacting the nation’s struggling workplaces, choking the economy and justifying all manner of authoritarian tyrannies being inflicted on the populace by state and federal governments.

  Yet while it is easy to be distracted by political theater, distressed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and divided over authoritarian lockdowns and mandates, there are still darker forces afoot that cannot—should not—must not be ignored.

  Here’s a news flash for you: there are sexual predators on America’s police forces.

  

  Indeed, when it comes to sex trafficking—the buying and selling of young girls, boys and women for sex—police have become both predators and pimps. As the Philadelphia Inquirer reports, “Hundreds of police officers across the country have turned from protectors to predators, using the power of their badge to extort sex.”

  Victims of sex trafficking report that police are among those “buying” young girls and women for sex. Incredibly, this COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in even greater numbers of children being preyed upon by sex traffickers.

  Unfortunately, rather than being part of the solution, America’s police forces—riddled with corruption, brutality, sexual misconduct and drug abuse—have largely become part of the problem.

  In New York, for instance, seven NYPD cops—three sergeants, two detectives and two officers—were accused of running brothels that sold 15-minute sexual encounters, raking in more than $2 million over the course of 13 months.

  In California, a police sergeant—a 16-year veteran of the police force—was arrested for raping a 16-year-old girl who was being held captive and sold for sex in a home in an upscale neighborhood.

  A week-long sting in Florida ended with 277 arrests of individuals accused of sex trafficking, including doctors, pharmacists and police officers.

  Sex trafficking victims in Hawaii described “cops asking for sexual favors to more coercive situations like I’ll let you go if you do X, Y, or Z for me.”

  One study found that “over 14 percent of sex workers said that they had been threatened with arrest unless they had sex with a police officer.” In many states, it’s actually legal for police to have sex with prostitutes during the course of sting operations.

  While the problem of cops engaged in sex trafficking is part of the American police state’s seedy underbelly that doesn’t get addressed enough, equally alarming is the number of cops who commit sex crimes against those they encounter as part of their job duties, a largely underreported number given the “blue wall of silence” that shields police misconduct.

  Former Seattle police chief Norm Stamper describes cases in which cops fondled prisoners, made false traffic stops of attractive women, traded sexual favors for freedom, had sex with teenagers and raped children.

  Young girls are particularly vulnerable to these predators in blue.

  Former police officer Phil Stinson estimates that half of the victims of police sex crimes are minors under the age of eighteen.

  According to The Washington Post, a national study found that 40 percent of reported cases of police sexual misconduct involved teens. One young woman was assaulted during a “ride along” with an officer, who said in a taped confession: “The badge gets you the p—y and the p—y gets your badge, you know?”

  For example, a Pennsylvania police chief and his friend were arrested for allegedly raping a young girl hundreds of times—orally, vaginally, and anally several times a week—over the course of seven years, starting when she was 4 years old.

  In 2017, two NYPD cops were accused of arresting a teenager, handcuffing her, and driving her in an unmarked van to a nearby parking lot, where they raped her and forced her to perform oral sex on them, then dropped her off on a nearby street corner.

  The New York Times reports that “a sheriff’s deputy in San Antonio was charged with sexually assaulting the 4-year-old daughter of an undocumented Guatemalan woman and threatening to have her deported if she reported the abuse.”

  One young girl, J.E., was kidnapped by a Border Patrol agent when she was 14 years old, taken to his apartment and raped. “In the apartment, there were two beds on top of the other, children’s bunk beds, and ropes there, too. They were shoelaces. For my wrists and my feet. My mind was blank,” recalls J.E. “I was trying to understand everything. I didn’t know what to do. My feet were tied up. I would look at him and he had a gun. And that frightened me. I asked him why, and he answered me that he was doing this to me because I was the prettiest one of the three.”

  Two teenage girls accused a Customs and Border Protection officer of forcing them to strip, fondling them, then trying to get them to stop crying by offering chocolates, potato chips and a blanket. The government settled the case for $125,000. (Mind you, this is the same government that separated immigrant children from their parents and locked them up in detention centers, where they were easy prey for sexual predators. At one point, the government had received more than 4500 complaints about sexual abuse at those child detention facilities.)

  The police state’s sexual assaults of children are sickening enough, but when you add sex crimes against grown women into the mix, the picture becomes even more sordid.

  According to The Washington Post, “research on ‘police sexual misconduct’—a term used to describe actions from sexual harassment and extortion to forcible rape by officers—overwhelmingly concludes that it is a systemic problem.”

  Investigative journalist Andrea Ritchie has tracked national patterns of sexual violence by police officers during traffic stops, in addition to heightened risk from minor offenses, drug arrests and police interactions with teenagers.

  Victims of domestic abuse, women of color, transgender women, women who use drugs or alcohol, and women involved in the sex trade are particularly vulnerable to sexual assault by police.

  One Oklahoma City police officer allegedly sexually assaulted at least seven women while on duty over the course of four months, including a 57-year-old grandmother who says she was forced to give the cop oral sex after he pulled her over.

  A Philadelphia state trooper, eventually convicted of assaulting six women and teenagers, once visited the hospital bedside of a pregnant woman who had attempted suicide, and groped her breasts and masturbated.

  These aren’t isolated incidents.

  According to research from Bowling Green State University, police officers in the U.S. were charged with more than 400 rapes over a 9-year period. During that same time period, 600 police officers were arrested for forcible fondling; 219 were charged with forcible sodomy; 186 were arrested for statutory rape; 58 for sexual assault with an object; and 98 with indecent exposure.

  Sexual assault is believed to be the second-most reported form of misconduct against police officers after the use of excessive force, making up more than 9% of all complaints.

  Even so, these crimes are believed to be largely underreported so much so that sex crimes may in fact be the number one form of misconduct among police officers.

  So why are the numbers underreported?

  “The women are terrified. Who are they going to call? It’s the police who are abusing them,” said Penny Harrington, the former police chief of Portland, Ore.

  One Philadelphia cop threatened to arrest a teenager for carjacking unless she had sex with him. “He had all the power. I had no choice,” testified the girl. “Who was I? He had his badge.”

  This is the danger of a police state that invests its henchmen with so much power that they don’t even need to use handcuffs or a gun to get what they want.

  Making matters worse, most police departments do little to identify the offenders, and even less to stop them. “Unlike other types of police misconduct, the abuse of police power to coerce sex is little addressed in training, and rarely tracked by police disciplinary systems,” conclude Nancy Phillips and Craig R. McCoy writing for the Philadelphia Inquirer. “This official neglect makes it easier for predators to escape punishment and find new victims.”

  Unfortunately, this is a problem that is hiding in plain sight, covered up by government agencies that are failing in their constitutional duties to serve and protect “we the people.”

  That thin blue line of knee-jerk adulation and absolute loyalty to police above and beyond what the law requires is creating a menace to society that cannot be ignored.

  As researcher Jonathan Blanks notes, “The system is rigged to protect police officers from outside accountability. The worst cops are going to get the most protection.”

  Hyped up on the power of the badge and their weaponry, protected from charges of wrongdoing by police unions and government agencies, and empowered by rapidly advancing tools—technological and otherwise—that make it all too easy to identify, track and take advantage of vulnerable members of society, predators on the nation’s police forces are growing in number.

  “It can start with a police officer punching a woman’s license plate into a police computer – not to see whether a car is stolen, but to check out her picture,” warns investigative journalists Nancy Phillips and Craig R. McCoy.

  “If they are not caught, or left unpunished, the abusers tend to keep going, and get worse, experts say.”

  So where does this leave us?

  The courts, by allowing the government’s desire for unregulated, unaccountable, expansive power to trump justice and the rule of law, have turned away from this menace. Politicians, eager for the support of the powerful police unions, have turned away from this menace. Police unions, which have been at the forefront of the effort to shield sexual misconduct by cops, have exacerbated this menace.

  Yet for the sake of the most vulnerable among us, we as a nation must stop turning away from this menace in our midst.

  For starters, police should not be expected—or allowed—to police themselves.

  Misconduct by local police has become a national problem. Therefore, the response to this national problem must start at the local level.

  This is no longer a matter of a few bad apples. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the entire system has become corrupted and must be reformed.

  Greater oversight is needed, yes, but also greater accountability and more significant consequences for assaults.

  Andrea Ritchie’s piece in The Washington Post provides some practical suggestions for reform ranging from small steps to structural changes (greater surveillance of police movements, heightened scrutiny of police interactions and traffic stops, and more civilian oversight boards), but as she acknowledges, these efforts still don’t strike at the root of the problem: a criminal justice system that protects abusers and encourages abuse.

  It’s difficult to say whether modern-day policing with its deep-seated corruption, immunity from accountability, and authoritarian approach to law enforcement attracts this kind of deviant behavior or cultivates it, but empowering police to view themselves as the best, or even the only, solution to the public’s problems, while failing to hold them accountable for misconduct, will only deepen the policing crisis that grows deadlier and more menacing by the day.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 23:40

• NBC Reporter Triggered After Armory Sells "Let's Go Brandon" AR-15s 
  NBC Reporter Triggered After Armory Sells “Let’s Go Brandon” AR-15s 

  The conservative meme, “Let’s Go Brandon!” is a euphemism for “f— Joe Biden” that has gone viral across America since an early October NASCAR race. The phrase has even made it on the lower of an AR-15, a lightweight semi-automatic rifle, sold by one gun armory in South Carolina, triggering an NBC reporter to call the Secret Service. 

  NBC News’ Ken Dilanian was so distraught about Palmetto State Armory’s new “LETSGO-15 Stripped Lower Receiver” that he “called the Secret Service about this” but failed to mention what he actually discussed. He said, “they [Secret Service] had no comment.” 

  I called the Secret Service about this. They had no comment. https://t.co/CmcATXY5DV pic.twitter.com/vD7dblz9JG

  — Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) November 1, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Details about the lower include “LETSGO-15” is made “from the most advanced aerospace manufacturing technology.” The lower includes a fire selector with three modes: “‘F@CK!'” (Safe), “‘JOE!'” (Fire), “‘BIDEN!'” (Full-Auto).”

  

  “Let’s go Brandon” refers to a slogan that has gone viral across America since early October at Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama in which a journalist misreported the chant “f— Joe Biden” as praise toward winning driver Brandon Brown.

  More on this is a Maryland-based gun advocacy group, The Machine Gun Nest, which writes: 

  Considering that the rallying call in 2016 was “F Donald Trump” the idea that a “let’s go Brandon” lower receiver would warrant a call to the secret service is another reason why the left has lost Virginia, and will continue to lose states where they are out of touch with the general population. If this lower receiver read “F*** Donald Trump” not sure if this person would have even batted an eye. The fact that the caller in question is a NBC News reporter is Unsurprising, because we know where the corporate media’s loyalties lie. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 23:20

• US Marines Training Elite Taiwanese Troops At Base In Guam
  US Marines Training Elite Taiwanese Troops At Base In Guam

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com, 

  Taiwan’s defense minister on Tuesday appeared to confirm a report that said Taiwanese Marines are being trained by their US counterparts in Guam.

  The report from Taiwan’s Apple Daily said about 40 members of Taiwan’s Republic of China Marine Corps were selected to partake in drills led by US Marines in Guam for one month.

  

  Discussing the report, Taiwanese Defense Minister Chiu Kuo-cheng said, “We have a long history of exchanges and cooperation with the United States. There is necessary interaction on some levels, and this forms part of the exchanges.”

  According to Apple Daily, the training is happening under a program known as “Marine Roar” that was established in 1958 when the US and Taiwan still shared a mutual defense treaty. The program stopped in 1979 when Washington severed official relations with Taipei, but it was revived in 2017.

  The revelation comes after Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen confirmed the presence of US troops on the island of Taiwan, making her the first Taiwanese leader to do so since 1979.

  The South China Morning Post reported Monday that China had been aware that the US has deployed small numbers of troops to Taiwan for training purposes over the past few decades.

  

  A Chinese military source told the Post that the US and China had a tacit understanding over the issue, and Taiwan’s acknowledgment was meant as a provocation. The source said the move was a “politically-motivated attempt to provoke the mainland authorities’ bottom line.”

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 23:00

• Biden Admin Blacklists Israeli Spyware Firms In Unprecedented Move Against Ally
  Biden Admin Blacklists Israeli Spyware Firms In Unprecedented Move Against Ally

  The controversial Israeli company NSO group has been placed on a US blacklist by the Biden administration, in an almost unprecedented move targeting of an Israeli entity, given the Jewish state is America’s closest longtime ally in the region. Another Israeli spyware company that works closely with the government was also blacklisted in the same designation.

  The White House moved against NSO for having acted “contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US” – after last summer a bombshell investigation by the French non-profit group Forbidden Stories revealed its cutting edge spyware was used by foreign governments to hack Western allies, including accessing the mobile numbers of French President Emmanuel Macron and much of his cabinet. 

  

  Specifically its Pegasus phone-hacking tool was found to have been used to “maliciously target”  journalists and activists as well as top government officials. Revealed by the initial report was an extensive list that included over 600 government officials and politicians from over 30 countries. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was also a big name on the list. 

  The US Commerce Dept. announced in a statement: “Today’s action is a part of the Biden-Harris administration’s efforts to put human rights at the center of US foreign policy, including by working to stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression.”

  “This effort is aimed at improving citizens’ digital security, combatting cyber threats, and mitigating unlawful surveillance and follows a recent interim final rule released by the commerce department establishing controls on the export, reexport, or in-country transfer of certain items that can be used for malicious cyber activities,” it said.

  Additionally the Israel-based company Candiru was also placed on the “entity list” with two other companies from Russia and Singapore, according to the Commerce statement:

  NSO Group and Candiru (Israel) were added to the Entity List based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.

  NSO Group is well-known to work closely with the Israeli government as a key defense contractor, and government authorities oversee and regulate the export of Pegasus as a unique defense technology which must be prevented from being used by Israel’s enemies. The spyware is actually controlled for export in the same way that weapons would be. It’s believed the Saudis, for example, used such technology to hack and track journalists and dissidents, such as the murdered Jamal Khashoggi, killed at the Istanbul consulate in 2018 at the hands of Saudi operatives on orders from the kingdom.

  

  Given this, the question of the US actually extending punitive measures on Israeli officials themselves would be the next big step (obviously extremely unlikely given that it’s America’s closest Mideast ally and defense partner).

  According to Axios’ Barak Ravid, this was clarified later on Wednesday following the Commerce statement: “The State Department clarifies the Biden administration will not take steps against Israel or the Israeli government after the decision to blacklist Israeli Cyber spying companies NSO and Candiru,” he wrote.

  Being on the entities list means the two Israeli companies are now barred from buying parts and components from US companies without specific approval from US authorities, which would require being issued a special license. Moreover, typically the reputational damage on a global scale is a huge black eye for such companies seeking to extend into foreign markets.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 22:40

• Airport Disruptions Possible As Biden Vaccine Mandate For TSA Workers Looms: Lawmakers
  Airport Disruptions Possible As Biden Vaccine Mandate For TSA Workers Looms: Lawmakers

  Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

  Top Republican Congress members voiced concerns of possible domestic air travel concerns due to President Joe Biden’s pending COVID-19 vaccine mandate for federal employees, including Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers.

  

  Up to 40 percent of TSA workers, who oversee airport security checkpoints, have not gotten vaccinated yet, the GOP lawmakers wrote in a letter to TSA Administrator David Pekoske. They requested that Pekoske provide an update on whether a staffing shortage of TSA workers looms and if the agency has a contingency plan in place.

  “Unfortunately, it appears TSA is headed toward a scenario in which up to 40 percent of its workforce may not be compliant with the President’s Executive Order by the November 8 deadline. Such a scenario could have severe impacts on transportation security and the aviation, travel, and tourism industries,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the ranking senator on the Transportation Committee, and Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee.

  In mid-October, Pekoske told CNN that as many as 4 out of 10 TSA workers, including security screeners, haven’t received the vaccine yet.

  Pekoske added that his agency is “building contingency plans” over possible staffing shortages. Although Nov. 8 is the deadline for all federal workers to get vaccinated under an executive order signed by Biden in September, Pekoske hasn’t provided an update since his CNN interview aired.

  At the time, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), said that the vaccination statuses among workers are self-reported to the agency, and Pekoske’s remark doesn’t necessarily mean that 40 percent of TSA workers haven’t received the shot. The Epoch Times has contacted DHS for comment.

  And while the GOP lawmakers said they believe vaccines are the best way for TSA workers to protect their coworkers and others, they warned that Biden’s mandate may cause “significant disruptions” to air travel and the agency’s operations—namely, as the holiday travel season approaches.

  “Such a scenario could have severe impacts on transportation security and the aviation, travel, and tourism industries,” they wrote.

  “A steep decline in the number of available [security officers] to screen passengers during the upcoming holiday season could have severe impacts on our economy, including small and rural communities such as the ones we represent.”

  The U.S. Office of Personnel Management in October issued a memo saying federal agencies should begin enforcing the administration’s vaccine mandate starting Nov. 9 for federal workers who still aren’t vaccinated.

  “Employees who refuse to be vaccinated or provide proof of vaccination are subject to disciplinary measures, up to and including removal or termination from Federal service,” OPM Director Kiran Ahuja wrote.

  “The only exception is for individuals who receive a legally required exception pursuant to established agency processes.”

  Other than mandates for federal workers, Biden during his Sept. 9 speech that federal contractors—who have a Dec. 8 deadline—and most healthcare workers would also be required to get the vaccine. His administration also directed the Department of Labor to craft an emergency rule to require private businesses with 100 or more workers to either mandate their employees to get vaccinated or submit to weekly COVID-19 testing.

  Also in recent weeks, both American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, which are both federal contractors, were forced to cancel or delay thousands of flights due to inclement weather and unspecified staffing issues. Both airlines stressed that the delays were not related to the pending vaccine mandate.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 22:20

• Pentagon Sounds Alarm Over Accelerating Pace Of China's Nuke Stockpile: "1,000 Warheads By 2030"
  Pentagon Sounds Alarm Over Accelerating Pace Of China’s Nuke Stockpile: “1,000 Warheads By 2030”

  The US Department of Defense on Wednesday released its annual report which gives a detailed assessment of China’s military capabilities. The key and most alarming element to the report suggests China is planning to quadruple its nuclear weapons stockpile over the next decade.

  The new analysis finds that for the 2020 review, the Pentagon woefully underestimated China’s expanding ambitions regarding its nuclear arsenal. Whereas last year’s estimate forecast the country would have more than 400 nuclear warheads by 2030, the new 2021 report posits over 700 by 2027, and with a likely intent by China to produce over 1,000 warheads by 2030.

  

  The annual report to Congress on Chinese Military Power concludes that currently China’s projected aims are “exceeding the pace and size the [Department of Defense] projected in 2020.” By comparison, the US still has by far more nuclear warheads, at 3750.

  However, the report underscores that in tandem with rapidly increasing warhead production, delivery systems are being updated with an aim to heighten nuclear triad readiness, as Bloomberg quotes from the Pentagon review:

  “The PRC is investing in, and expanding, the number of its land-, sea-, and air-based nuclear delivery platforms and constructing the infrastructure necessary to support this major expansion of its nuclear forces,” the Defense Department said. That means China “has possibly already established a nascent nuclear triad” of delivery systems, it said, and is supporting its nuclear expansion “by increasing its capacity to produce and separate plutonium by constructing fast breeder reactors and reprocessing facilities.”

  Perhaps more interesting is that the report strongly suggests China has sped up its nuclear preparedness as a direct reaction to the US military’s heightened presence in the South China Sea by the end of the Trump administration. 

  “In the second half of 2020, the PRC perceived a significant threat that the United States would seek to provoke a military crisis or conflict in the near-term. These erroneous concerns were accompanied or fueled by widespread speculation in PRC media that the United States would deliberately instigate a conflict with the PRC in the South China Sea. This speculation accompanied intensified warning messaging in PRC state media, large-scale military drills, heightened readiness, and additional deployments,” the report lays out.

  While the DoD report calls the assumption of intentioned US provocations “erroneous” – it remains that rhetoric on China spanning both the Trump and Biden administrations have grown more bellicose. 

  Speaking of heightened, provocative language hyping the China threat…

  NEW – General Mark Milley assesses it unlikely that China will attempt to retake Taiwan within the next 6, 12, or 24 months. pic.twitter.com/WR78SD8Z2T

  — Disclose.tv (@disclosetv) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Currently the Chinese government is urging Washington and its nuclear-armed allies to adopt a ‘no first use’ of nuclear weapons policy – which has long been its own official stated position. Recent reports have indicated President Biden is ready to take a fresh look at US nuclear policy.

  The US is expected to release its Nuclear Posture Review by year’s end. America’s current doctrine of strategic ambiguity – which assumes the US has a right to deploy nuclear weapons whether offensive or defensive – is the longtime default position that allies like UK, France, Germany and Australia want Biden to stick by, as they perceive as key to their own national defense. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 22:00

• Miami Mayor To Take Full Paycheck In Bitcoin
  Miami Mayor To Take Full Paycheck In Bitcoin

  Submitted by Bitcoin Magazine,

  Miami Mayor Francis Suarez has committed to taking his next paycheck fully in bitcoin, becoming the first known U.S. politician to make such a move.

  The mayor, who is a BTC bull and has been taking large strides to integrate the network into his city’s operations, announced today his intention to convert 100% of his next paycheck into bitcoin on Twitter.

  “I’m going to take my next paycheck 100% in bitcoin…problem solved,” tweeted Suarez in response to Anthony Pompliano’s tweet asking who would be the first U.S. politician to accept their salary in BTC. The mayor asked for the help of Miami’s CIO Mike Sarasti.

  

  Sarasti said he had already sent the Mayor a Strike link for him to register and be able to receive his paycheck in bitcoin. “My experience receiving a portion of my pay last week went flawlessly,” Sarasti tweeted, hinting that he has been converting some of his own salary into BTC already. “Boss move,” he said, referring to the mayor’s decision to receive all, rather than part, of his pay in bitcoin.

  Mayor Suarez is vocal about turning Miami into a Bitcoin hub, which would integrate bitcoin into city operations and allow employees to receive their paychecks in bitcoin. The latter might not be necessary for actual implementation by the city, since people can do that with solutions such as Strike already. But enabling citizens to pay for city fees and taxes is also in the mayor’s plans.

  In February, Suarez’s proposal to integrate Bitcoin into Miami’s operations received approval, but the development has since stalled. The mayor received support at a county level shortly after, in April, but there has been little progress so far. More recently, however, Suarez claimed that paying government employees in bitcoin was still a “major priority” for the city of Miami.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 21:40

• US Navy's Zumwalt Stealth Destroyers To Get Hypersonic Missiles 
  US Navy’s Zumwalt Stealth Destroyers To Get Hypersonic Missiles 

  The U.S. Navy is planning to replace the deck gun of the Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers in the next few years with missile tubes to house hypersonic weapons.

  In a conversation with Navy News, the service said “engineering planning efforts” have already started to replace the 155mm Advanced Gun Turrets (AGS) in the forward hull. This will free up space for Vertical Launch System (VLS) cells that will store hypersonic missiles. There was no word on how many VLS cells would be fitted into the front of the vessels. At the moment, there are two stealth destroyers operational and one more under construction. 

  

  “In FY2021, the U.S. Navy decided on replacing all of these 155mm AGS turrets with Hypersonic missile VLS tubes for the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) Hypersonic missile,” Navy News said. 

  

  

  The USS Zumwalt (DDG-1000), the first of three 16,000-ton stealth destroyers, the service took delivery in 2020, just seven years late and plagued with problems, will be drydocked in 2024 to begin the retrofit construction. There was no mention of when the other destroyers would be drydocked for the retrofit. 

  Both the Army and Navy have been working on hypersonic weapon development. The services will use the same Common-Hypersonic Glide Body (C-HGB) for their surface-launched hypersonic missiles. The range of the weapon is expected to be around 1,700 miles. 

  News of the stealth destroyers expected to receive hypersonic missiles in two years comes as the Financial Times published two reports (see: here & here) on China’s hypersonic glide weapon that allegedly cruised around the world before nearly striking a target.  

  Our view is that the Zumwalt destroyer is outdated and spending hundreds of millions if not more on retrofitting VLS cells into the hull is a waste of taxpayers’ money. At the same time, China can launch hypersonic weapons from space. 

  America’s top military officer is beginning to realize the U.S. is falling behind in the hypersonic race with China. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 21:20

• Top Warehouse Operator Says Supply Chain Crisis Has "Reached The Peak"  
  Top Warehouse Operator Says Supply Chain Crisis Has “Reached The Peak”  

  By now, everyone is aware that global supply-chain congestion is off the charts and truly historic and has worsened in recent months, with 30 million tons of cargo waiting outside US ports ahead of the holiday season. But light could be emerging from the end of the tunnel, or at least peak disruption may have arrived. 

  “We’re through the worst of it. I think we’ve reached the peak,” said Malcolm Wilson, the CEO of GXO Logistics Inc., the world’s largest contract logistics provider that has more than 860 warehouses across the globe. “Hopefully, things will look a bit smoother as we move forward.”

  GXO is a downstream player from the ports that has seen delays because of the massive backlog of container ships on the US West and East Coast ports. Wilson said, “a lot of that cargo, a lot of those products now are channeling into our warehouses.” 

  This is excellent news, considering the executive director of the Port of Long Beach, the largest container port in the US, recently told Americans to buy their holiday gifts now as congestion continues to build.

  “Shop early because these delays and bottlenecks are going to continue to the end of the year,” Mario Cordero, the port’s executive director, said during an interview with Bloomberg Television. “Hopefully, we’ll have some strong mitigating factors.”

  About 40% of all containerized goods flow through the Port of Long Beach and the neighboring Port of Los Angeles. Port congestion has hit an all-time high of around 100 vessels at terminals or waiting offshore. In pre-pandemic times, the average backlog of ships at the twin ports is between 10 and 20. 

  To mitigate the congestion at ports which has dragged on economic growth, President Biden issued a directive last month to operate ports on a 24/7 basis. 

  We recently discussed a research report from Goldman Sachs in which the bank’s economists listed what they viewed as the three critical drivers of supply chain normalization and their most likely timing:

  1. improved chip supply driven by post-Delta factory restarts (4Q21) and eventually by expanded production capacity (2H22 and 2023);
  2. improved US labor supply (4Q21 and 1H22); and
  3. the wind-down of US port congestion (2H22).

  While some viewed Goldman’s forecast for a Q4 improvement in chip supply chains – a critical factor for renormalizing auto production – an overly optimistic US Steel CEO David Burritt said last week that “multiple auto customers, who are foreshadowing that the trough of the chip shortage could be behind us. They’re beginning to add to the fourth quarter and first quarter build schedules, and indicating to us, increasing usage rates, starting as early as next week.”

  Another sign congestion at ports is waning could be global container rates on major routes have peaked. Something we discussed as early as Oct. 4 in a piece titled “Cost Of Shipping Between China And U.S. Plunges… But For The Worst Possible Reason.” 

  

  Even though the worst supply chain crisis could’ve peaked, industry experts don’t believe congestion at ports will alleviate until 2023. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 20:40

• Seven Reasons Democrats Lost Virginia
  Seven Reasons Democrats Lost Virginia

  Authored by Carl. M. Cannon via RealClear Politics (emphasis ours),

  When Terry McAuliffe kicked off his third gubernatorial candidacy last December, some leading Virginia Democrats had mixed emotions. On one hand, party activists believed that in Jennifer Carroll Foy and Jennifer McClellan — two female African American lawmakers in the state legislature — they had credible candidates waiting in the wings to make history. The worry, which turned out to be accurate, was that the presence of a former governor with a famous fundraising prowess would squeeze them out.

  

  At the same time, party elders figured that McAuliffe’s candidacy would prevent the worst-case scenario: namely, that Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who was accused of forcing himself sexually on two women, would somehow win the Democratic primary. So Democrats consoled themselves. “Terry” had been a popular governor the first time around, they told themselves, and was always an energetic campaigner.

  “Certainly, he comes into the race in a very formidable position,” veteran Virginia political scholar Bob Holsworth said at the time. “He’s a popular former governor. He has tons of resources. And he loves to campaign. At the same time, the open question in this campaign is whether he is the person for the moment.”

  The answer turned out to be no. On Tuesday, after a rolling election that lasted two full months, none of those assets was enough. McAuliffe lost a close election to Republican neophyte Glenn Youngkin. The tally, with 94% of the vote counted, is 50.7% to 48.6%. Meanwhile, in a potentially shocking upset in New Jersey, Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli holds a 1,200-vote edge over incumbent Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy with 97% of the total counted. If Ciattarelli holds on for victory, the result will defy the pre-election polling — and leave Democrats stunned and Republicans counting the days until the 2022 midterms.

  In Virginia, a large and diverse state, a close election hinges on many factors. Here are seven.

  Reason 1: McAuliffe’s previous tenure in office wasn’t an advantage. Because Old Dominion governors cannot succeed themselves, McAuliffe was hampered from running on his record in the traditional way, i.e., boasting how well the state’s economy is doing, for instance, because someone else currently occupies the governor’s mansion. At the same time, McAuliffe was an old familiar warhorse who ran in 2009 (when he lost the primary) and 2013 (when he won the general election), and who was a top Clinton fundraiser and foot soldier and Democratic Party leader for decades. By contrast, Glenn Youngkin was a fresh face in a year in which the electorate in Virginia, as elsewhere, is in a sour and restive mood and incumbency itself — as Gov. Murphy may have learned in New Jersey — is its own liability. 

  Also, McAuliffe’s tenure in Richmond seems like a long time ago in U.S. politics, even though it really wasn’t. Since he left office, Americans have endured a lethal and disruptive pandemic, the turbulence of the Donald Trump years, and a spike in the culture wars. And the Virginia campaign was sucked into the vortex of all of it. 

  Reason 2: Terry McAuliffe rarely said why he wanted to be governor again. Did he want to be in a position to run for president in 2024, a goal he hinted at in 2018? Was he bored? Is he simply addicted to competitive politics? On the rare occasions when McAuliffe engaged this subject, his utterances were anodyne. “This pandemic is a turning point in our lives, and our goal can’t be just to go back to where we were before,” he said as he began his campaign. “We need to think big and act bold to take Virginia to the next level. And the one thing that has the opportunity to lift up all Virginians is education.” 

  In one sense, this boilerplate rhetoric proved prescient: Education — specifically, how and who should run the commonwealth’s public schools — was the issue that probably decided the outcome, albeit not in a way Democrats foresaw.

  Reason 3: It’s the parents, stupid. On Sept. 29, a day when the RealClearPolitics polling average showed McAuliffe leading with 46.9% support (to Youngkin’s 43.4%), the candidates squared off in a debate. That night, Youngkin made two points that resonated with many voters with school-age children. The first was a broad, pandemic-era complaint: “What we’ve seen over the course of the past 20 months is school systems refusing to engage with parents.” 

  To illustrate this claim, Youngkin invoked an issue usually associated with cultural conservatives: a bill Gov. McAuliffe vetoed that would have given parents more agency over sexually explicit books in school libraries. “I believe parents should be in charge of their kids’ education,” Youngkin added.

  McAuliffe took the bait — and then some. He began his rebuttal by scoffing at Youngkin for being “clueless” because he’d never held elective office. “I’m not going to let parents come into schools and actually take books out and make their own decisions,” McAuliffe added. That would have been sustainable, possibly even deft. But for some reason, he punctuated that thought with these 12 fateful words: “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” 

  The Youngkin campaign promptly ran ads consisting simply of a video clip of the exchange. By Election Day, Youngkin pressed his advantage repeatedly. “This is no longer a campaign,” he said. “It is a movement where we are … standing up and saying we have a fundamental right to be engaged in our kids’ education.” 

  Youngkin may have been a political novice, as McAuliffe pointed out snidely, but his instincts were better than those of an opponent who’d been in politics all his adult life. McAuliffe, with controversial teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten at his side, managed to galvanize thousands of tiger moms in opposition. Dads, too. Exit polling showed that 53% of voters said that parents should have “a lot of say” in their children’s education. 

  “That was a disaster for him,” veteran political strategist David Axelrod said Tuesday night as the votes rolled in. “I think the context was a little skewed … but it clearly galvanized voters.” 

  Reason 4: As the race tightened, McAuliffe doubled down on his approach to education. In the homestretch, he sounded less like the moderate middle-aged swing state Democrat who won the governorship eight years ago and more like a Gen-Z social justice warrior angling for a sinecure in a teachers’ union local. Critical race theory? Not taught anywhere in Virginia, McAuliffe maintained repeatedly — and inaccurately. Merely mentioning CRT, he sneered, is “a racist dog whistle.” McAuliffe also accused Glenn Youngkin of plotting to make abortion illegal in Virginia — which is not a power the governor possesses — and did so without feeling constrained by the facts. 

  By the last days of the campaign, McAuliffe was in full-on identity politics mode, asserting that minority students are made uneasy by the mere presence of white teachers. “In Virginia schools, K-12, 50% are students of color and yet 80% of teachers are white,” he said. “We all know what we have to do in a school to make everybody feel comfortable in school, so let’s diversify.” 

  What was the strategy here? To pump up the African American and Hispanic vote, one assumes, by making race a central component of the campaign. It may have backfired. At the least, it didn’t galvanize enough minority voters. Nor did the presence on the stump of Barack Obama and Vice President Kamala Harris change the equation. President Biden campaigned in Virginia, too, echoing all of McAuliffe’s negative talking points, most especially the one that ultimately became the Democrats’ whole ballgame: trying to morph Glenn Youngkin into Donald Trump’s clone. 

  [ZH]:

  Turns out telling parents that they have no say in their kids education and their kid is also a racist was a bad campaign strategy

  — Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Reason 5: For his part, Youngkin threaded the needle nicely on Trump. When this race began last summer, Glenn Youngkin was unknown in Virginia politics. Those who did know his name remembered him as a high school basketball star in the Tidewater area whose father played hoops at Duke. Youngkin himself played collegiately at Rice before going into business. With wealth accrued as a partner in a private equity firm, Youngkin was able to self-fund a Republican primary campaign in which he dispatched with not one, but two, Trump disciples. But he managed to do so without alienating the former president.

  Trump might have preferred one of the others, especially when Youngkin quietly rebuffed his offer to come campaign. But Trump clearly appreciated that Youngkin never bad-mouthed him, and the 45^th president responded accordingly: He told his supporters to flood to the polls.

  Successfully negotiating the mine field of Trump’s prickly ego not only helped Youngkin win on Tuesday. It also illuminated the path for future GOP candidates competing in states and districts that aren’t deep Republican red.

  Reason 6: Virginia gubernatorial elections are traditionally tough for the party in the White House. Of the last 12 Virginia governors going back to 1977, when Republican John Dalton won office during Jimmy Carter’s first year in the Oval Office, 11 of them belonged to a different party than the president. This phenomenon can’t be blamed on Joe Biden any more than it can be blamed on Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, the Bushes, Barack Obama — or Donald Trump. In some years, the Virginia results portend a sea change, as was the case in 1993 when George Allen’s victory was an early sign of the “Republican Revolution” that gave the GOP control of both houses on Capitol Hill just one year later. Other times, such as in 1997, it foreshadowed nothing.

  One historical footnote: The only time in the past 44 years that a Virginia gubernatorial candidate belonging to the same party as the president won was in 2013 when Barack Obama was president (and Joe Biden was vice president). That candidate? None other than Terry McAuliffe. It was asking a lot of him to repeat that feat. As it happened, it was asking too much.

  Reason 7: Something was afoot Tuesday night, not just in the Virginia governor’s race — and not just in Virginia. In the Old Dominion, Republicans also picked up the lieutenant governorship — electing the first black woman to win statewide in Virginia history — while ousting a Democratic attorney general. In Minneapolis, voters overwhelmingly rejected a change in the city charter that would have restructured the much-maligned local police department. In Buffalo, a socialist who had won the Democratic primary for mayor was defeated by a write-in vote that went overwhelmingly to the incumbent. New York City’s new mayor is an ex-police officer who favors gun rights. Across the river in New Jersey — in the shock of the night —Ciattarelli has the incumbent Murphy on the ropes. This, in a state Joe Biden carried by 16 percentage points just one year ago.

  Is President Biden a disappointment to voters, a drag on down-ticket Democrats? Perhaps, but that seems too tidy an explanation. It’s true that after a healthy honeymoon with voters, Biden’s job approval rating has plummeted amid continued spikes in violent crime, the debacle in Afghanistan, chaos at the border, the continuing coronavirus pandemic, inflation in food and energy prices, and economic uncertainty propelled by a novel problem — employers can’t find enough workers to fill the jobs they have.

  And though it’s also true that Republicans are giddy this morning about finishing what they started come next year’s midterms, one plausible conclusion from Tuesday’s vote is that a majority of voters want Biden to be the president he promised to be. He was the moderate who defeated a slew of presidential contenders to his left — the one who vowed to work for all Americans, not just those who supported him. Yet he and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi somehow find themselves under the thumb of the left wing of their own party. This nation’s electorate rejected the excesses of Trumpism. Tuesday was another corrective, a reminder to the Democratic Party that although few moderates remain in Washington, tens of millions of them live outside the Beltway. They are paying attention and they vote.

  Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 20:20

• Israel Launches Huge Missile & Drone-Detecting Balloon As Iran Expands Reach
  Israel Launches Huge Missile & Drone-Detecting Balloon As Iran Expands Reach

  Israel’s Defense Ministry on Wednesday unveiled the latest upgrade to its anti-air defenses, citing a heightened continued threat from Iran’s ballistic missile arsenal and increasingly sophisticated drones, also possessed by Lebanon’s Iran-backed ally Hezbollah.

  A large new high altitude blimp called “Sky Dew” is set to be launched, which is equipped with a radar-based system in order to provide early detection for any inbound long-range missiles or drones. The balloon’s sensors will complement existing anti-air defenses and radar, which includes the Iron Dome missile system, according to Israeli media reports. 

  

  One of the key developers, Israeli Aerospace Industries, described in a statement that “The elevated sensor system provides a significant technological and operational advantage for early and precise threat detection.”

  “This technology increases the reliability of the aerial surveillance picture, and increases efficiency against a range of targets,” company CEO Boaz Levy added.

  Crucially the high-tech balloon was developed with US military help. Israel’s Missile Defense Organization and the United States’ Missile Defense Agency worked together in developing the project in order to ensure Israel’s “qualitative military edge” against regional threats, according to director of the American Missile Defense Agency, Vice Admiral Jon Hill. Maintaining the Jewish state’s military dominance is currently a defined US foreign policy and strategic goal.

  After years of testing the balloon’s capabilities in detecting long-range threats, which officials say have proved successful, it’s likely that more of the radar equipped balloons will be deployed in the coming years. Currently Israel’s sees the greatest external threats as against it’s northern region, given also the proximity to southern Lebanon and Syria. According to The Times of Israel: 

  The Israeli military fears that in the coming years that superiority may be tested as Iranian-made and -designed drones and cruise missiles flood the Middle East, representing a greater threat to Israel than the simple rockets that terror groups in the region have possessed until now.

  In light of this threat, the IDF intends to have full, permanent defensive coverage in place over the airspace of northern Israel within the next two years, with plans to eventually expand it to the entire country.

  The Israeli Defense Ministry and Air Force are preparing to launch a massive new missile detection balloon into the skies over northern Israel.

  “It represents a significant element in the strengthening of the defense of the country’s borders,” the ministry says. https://t.co/8M7LIXgkNc

  — Judah Ari Gross (@JudahAriGross) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Despite Israeli leaders consistently framing the military’s posture as primarily “defensive” – in recent years the air force has conducted literally hundreds of raids and strikes deep inside Syria, which Tel Aviv says is toward disrupting pro-Iranian networks in the country, particularly Hezbollah.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 20:00

• Get Ready For Food Rationing
  Get Ready For Food Rationing

  Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

  It was a very strange moment when this week the spokesperson for the president defended inflation as a high-class problem. She explained that higher prices are merely a sign that economic activity is picking up. People are buying things and that’s good. Of course that pushes up prices, she said. Just deal with it.

  At this point, the White House will say anything. Truth, facts, morality – these things matter less and less in current-day America. Your misery is an illusion. Losing your job because you don’t want the jab? Hey, that is the price you pay for noncompliance. Expect no sympathy from anyone in charge.

  

  The Great Rationing

  It must have been this flippant dismissal that caused me to go over the top. I wrote that hyperinflation could lead not only to implicit price controls, but also to rationing. Eventually, we could see the government issuing food tickets into bank accounts that allow us only a certain amount of food for the week. One chicken. One pound of hamburger heat. Five rolls of toilet paper.

  I wrote that with a worry that I might be going too far here with speculation. This is America, after all, and we don’t do things this way. And yet in the old America we didn’t close churches for Easter, or skip Christmas for fear of a virus. And so on. Yet we know now that in fact we do these things, and easily.

  Fear makes anything possible.

  And so right on cue — things are moving very fast these days — The Washington Post has published an article by one of its regular contributors (Micheline Maynard) with one message:

  GET USED TO IT!

  She says that we have come to expect too much for the economy. Ever since 1911, she says, we’ve been obsessed with getting stuff and getting it fast. That’s dumb, she says. Deprivation is not only the new normal; it’s the way things should be.

  “Across the country, Americans’ expectations of speedy service and easy access to consumer products have been crushed like a Styrofoam container in a trash compactor,” she writes.

  “Time for some new, more realistic expectations.”

  For example, she writes of the candy shortage. The milk shortage. The everything shortage. Then she concludes: “Rather than living constantly on the verge of throwing a fit, and risking taking it out on overwhelmed servers, struggling shop owners or late-arriving delivery people, we’d do ourselves a favor by consciously lowering expectations.”

  How bad can it get? She saves the best for the very end:

  “American consumers might have been spoiled, but generations of them have also dealt with shortages of some kind — gasoline in the 1970s, food rationing in the 1940s, housing in the 1920s, when cities such as Detroit were booming. Now it’s our turn to make adjustments.”

  You might read that again. She is defending gas lines. More astonishingly, she is going on about the glorious suffering of wartime, when food was rationed with rationing tickets! You cannot make this stuff up.

  What’s worse, that The Washington Post published it reveals something about what they imagine could be our future. And by future I don’t mean distant future. I mean next year.

  No One Is Safe

  You will notice the growing tribalization of everything and everyone in the last 20 months. People are retreating to what is safe and known, their own kind. Their neighborhood. Their closest friends. Their families. Even those are strained, but that is all we have. The old world of integration and heterogeneity is shattered, commercial culture is dead in large parts of the country and fear and depression are taking over as the dominant emotions.

  I write that and my friends in Texas, Florida and South Dakota say: “I have no idea what you are talking about. Life around here is normal. Concerts are packed. Restaurants are busy. No one is wearing masks. We are so over this!”

  I’m happy for them. Truly. But there’s a problem. Many problems. We all share the same monetary unit. Supply chains are connected all over the country, and the world. Every state relies on goods from every other state. We are long past autarky. We can feel like we are safe, but we are not.

  Hyperinflation will affect everyone without exception. If North Carolina can’t get milk and chicken, neither can Florida and New Mexico. The deprivation will be shared. A good example is the car shortage. Texas was not spared simply because the state has a relatively halfway decent governor who finally got wise, too late, but he finally got there. Still the car lots are empty.

  It’s the same with many things. We all use the same dollar. Its destruction will hit South Dakota the same as it hits California. There will be no safe space.

  Many people moved to get away from despotism during this last year. They thought they were safe. They are not. Yes, life for now is better in Miami than Chicago but when the crisis hits, it will not spare red states with reasonable governors just because the people there have not been part of the insanity for a long time. They will still pay the price.

  The Great Deprivation

  In the past when things went wrong, at least our leaders admitted that things were not going so well. They tried to fix the problem. It’s not clear that our current leadership in Washington even believes it is a problem. The response toward existing inflation is telling. They think it’s all fine.

  Gas lines? Fine: Just switch to electric. No heating oil or it is unaffordable? That’s all the better for solving climate change.

  No bags in the stores? Just bring your own. No meat? Eat veggie burgers. And so on.

  These people are part of a cult. They do not oppose poverty. They think it’s about time we experienced it. Poverty is good for us. Deprivation is plenty. Inflation is prosperity. Empty shelves are a reset to the way things should be.

  These are people for whom socialism was not a failure but a triumph in which people learned to become a new form of community through suffering. In fact, they are pro-suffering. It’s a new form of leftist ideology that has gained steam for decades. Now they are in charge. They get perverse pleasure out of the whole scene.

  It doesn’t matter how bad it gets. Our leaders will never admit failure. They will look at the disaster they are creating and call it success. This is what is truly chilling about the unfolding crisis: They do not believe it is a crisis. They think this is a reset to the way things should work.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 19:40

• Mysterious "Jet Pack Man" Could Actually Be A Balloon
  Mysterious “Jet Pack Man” Could Actually Be A Balloon

  The mystery of the “Jet Pack Man” sightings over Los Angeles may finally have been identified as an object that doesn’t require engines, fuel, or high-tech alien technology but rather a simple ballon. 

  

  “One working theory is that pilots might have seen balloons,” the FBI and FAA said in statements after NBC Los Angeles published images and a video taken by a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter that appear to show a human-shaped inflatable toy, or what resembled Jack Skellington – the main character in Tim Burton’s 1993 movie “A Nightmare Before Christmas” – ballon, flying thousands of feet above Beverly Hills. 

  Government officials told NBC Los Angeles that the single balloon sighting could’ve been from a Halloween display. However, it’s becoming more plausible that sightings of a jet pack are likely to be balloons that had drifted near LAX. 

  Here are the three sightings of jet pack man last year:

  • “We Just Passed A Guy In A Jet Pack”: FBI Investigating After Pilots Report Sighting At 3,000 Feet
  • Airline Crew Spots ‘Guy In Jetpack’ Flying 6,000 Feet Over LAX In 2nd ‘Dangerous’ Incident
  • Stunning Video Appears To Capture Mysterious LA ‘Jetpack Man’

  Retired airline pilot and aviation consultant Ross Aimer told NBC Los Angeles that balloons seem to be more in line with what pilots have reported over the last year. 

  “There’s a very good possibility the previous ones were also balloons and pilots mistook them as jetpacks,” Aimer said. “This is a better explanation to the aviation community and to me.”

  Still, there’s no confirmation on previous sightings, but the working theory now appears to show balloons instead of jet packs. Now it’s time for authorities to request information on Amazon customers in the LA area who purchased human-sized balloons to find possible leads. 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 19:20

• COP26: Trudeau's Heightened Climate Demands On Oil & Gas Sparks Criticism Back Home
  COP26: Trudeau’s Heightened Climate Demands On Oil & Gas Sparks Criticism Back Home

  Authored by Rahul Vaidyanath via The Epoch Times,

  In the lead-up to COP26, the G20 was not as downbeat on oil and gas as it could have been, but Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood apart by ramping up talk on fighting emissions. Back home, however, his words caused some consternation for the industry that is already working toward net-zero 2050. The leader’s pledges also appear to have had no effect on some of the world’s biggest polluters.

  

  The G20, which met in Rome on Oct. 30–31, did not commit to achieving net zero by 2050. The time frame proposed was “by or around mid-century.” Carbon-intensive countries like China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia have indicated they would aim to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060. China and Russia were not in attendance at COP26.

  The G20 did not take further action to phase out fossil fuel subsidies. 

  Amid an energy crisis and surge in inflation, the current demand for oil and natural gas is unmistakable. U.S. President Joe Biden had previously urged the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) to increase production. In the push toward net-zero 2050, the International Energy Agency forecasted OPEC’s share of a much smaller global supply of oil to expand.

  But Trudeau increased the pressure on Canada’s energy sector with talk of a hard cap. 

  “Today, Canada moves to cap oil and gas sector emissions and ensure they decline at a pace and scale needed to achieve net-zero by 2050,” Trudeau tweeted on Nov. 1 at COP26, which runs from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12 in Glasgow, Scotland. The United Nations COP (Conference of the Parties) is the world’s highest-profile climate conference, since the Paris Agreement—a legally binding international treaty on climate change—was reached at COP21 in 2015. 

  Alberta’s environment and parks minister Jason Nixon told BNN Bloomberg that the feds haven’t invested nearly enough to achieve their emission reduction goals.

  “The prime minister seems to go on a regular basis and set targets but doesn’t really invest to make sure those targets will come forward,” he said.

  “Their investment does not meet their ambition.”

  China is the world’s top carbon emitter, producing 28 percent of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, with 60 percent of its electricity coming from coal. But it is not making additional efforts to cut back on emissions. Meanwhile, Canada is responsible for less than 2 percent of GHG globally.

  G20 leaders “took only baby steps” on environmental issues, said John Kirton, director of the G20 Research Group at the University of Toronto, in his Oct. 31 analysis of the Rome summit.

  He noted that the G20 did “very little else” other than giving serious attention to natural carbon sinks and detailing emission sources.

  Big Questions Remain

  The feds issued a statement on Nov. 1 saying that “Canada is the first major oil-producing country moving to capping and reducing pollution from the oil and gas sector to net zero by 2050.”

  The Canadian government will set five-year national emission reduction targets—as mandated by Bill C-12, passed in June—and also “ensure that the sector makes a meaningful contribution to meeting Canada’s 2030 climate goals.” The feds will seek the advice of the Net-Zero Advisory Body on how to best move forward on this approach.

  Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre, shadow minister for jobs and industry, tweeted, “Will Trudeau’s cap on oil & gas apply to the dirty dictatorships from which we import or just to Made-in-Canada energy? Asking for several hundred thousand workers.”

  To transition to a lower-carbon economy, many questions remain unanswered in Canada and globally relating to investment, carbon pricing, and employment. The expectation—and for some, hope—is that COP26 will tackle the fine print as environmental groups argue not enough is being done quickly while society’s energy demands grow and the livelihoods of thousands hang in the balance. 

  “It will be incredibly important for the federal government and the natural gas and oil industry to work collaboratively to ensure we meet our environmental and social outcomes. To achieve the ambitions of the Paris Agreement the world will need increased access to lower emission natural gas and oil,” said Tim McMillan, president & CEO of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), in a statement. 

  “Canada, under the right policy environment, can position ourselves as a preferred global supplier, creating jobs and prosperity for Canadians and helping to lower global greenhouse gas emissions,” McMillan said.

  Alberta on Nov. 1 announced an investment of $176 million to reduce GHG emissions through 16 clean-energy projects. The initiatives are expected to cut about 7 million tonnes of emissions annually by 2030.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 19:00

• NJ Governor's Race Called For Incumbent Murphy After Upset Nail-Biter
  NJ Governor’s Race Called For Incumbent Murphy After Upset Nail-Biter

  Update (1835ET): The GOP upset in New Jersey has finally been called: New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy has reportedly clinched his second term as governor of the Garden State after defeating former GOP state state Assembleyman Jack Ciattarelli in a gubernatorial race that was unexpectedly close.

  The race was finally called Wednesday evening, with Murphy beating back Ciattarelli in a race that was supposed to be an easy re-election victory for the Democrat, but turned into an unexpected nail-biter.

  According to the Hill, polls had slightly narrowed in the final few weeks of the campaign (although RCP’s average poll still had Murphy up by a significant margin heading into election day). Ciattarelli performed far better than expectations, holding a slight lead over Murphy for much of Tuesday night before the count ultimately slipped into the Democrats’ favor early Wednesday.

  Murphy is the first Democratic governor of NJ to win reelection in 4 decades. And the closeness of the race now has Democrats questioning the public mood and popularity of President Biden and his agenda, while Republicans see Murphy’s relatively poor performance as a sign that they might be able to make serious gains in Congress during next year’s mid-term election.

  * * *

  Update (1115ET): According to the latest figures from Bloomberg and the AP, NJ Gov. Phil Murphy has a narrow lead in NJ’s still-too-close-to-call gubernatorial race.

  Murphy is leading by around 7K votes despite a surge in support for Republican challenger Jack Ciattarelli overnight. Votes are still being counted, particularly mail-in ballots in what BBG described as “strongly Democratic counties.”

  I’ve seen enough: Gov. Phil Murphy (D) defeats Jack Ciattarelli (R) in the New Jersey governor’s race. #NJGOV

  — Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  At least one major forecaster – David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report – has made a projection that Murphy will eventually win, but it could be days, or even weeks before the outcome is decided, and there’s a chance that whoever ends up on the losing end might request a recount, given that the race has come down to thousands of votes out of more than 2MM cast.

  BBG explained that the Garden State has typically leaned Democratic, but voters frustrated by the state’s high taxes have kept Democratic governors to single terms for more than four decades. The state’s most recent GOP governor, Chris Christie, managed to win two terms before he was term-limited out.

  * * *

  If the off-year election of 2021 truly was a proxy for the public’s feelings toward President Biden and the Democrats, then the Dems have officially been warned: their shallow electoral mandate is already collapsing – and the midterms are still a year off. Because the Dems had a worse Tuesday night than the Houston Astros, a sign that voters are pushing back against the party’s increasingly leftward drift.

  Not only did Republican political newcomer Glenn Youngkin wax former Democratic Gov. (and Clinton pal) Terry McAuliffe in Virginia, but in New Jersey, what was supposed to be an easy re-election victory for Gov. (and former Goldman Sachs employee) Phil Murphy has turned into a political dogfight, with neither Murphy nor his GOP rival Jack Ciattarelli able to claim victory after a long night of ballot-counting. Both spoke to supporters in post-midnight speeches, but the mood of deflation felt by the Democrats was difficult to ignore.

  And while the pundits are still clinging to the notion that Murphy will clinch re-election – after all, he had a massive advantage including 1 million more registered voters and far more cash in his campaign coffers than his GOP rival – the race is still neck and neck.

  Based on the counties that are outstanding, I would think Murphy squeaks by with a narrow victory: https://t.co/mRzVRJOWK5 pic.twitter.com/0f98Z3eXXS

  — Steve Chernoski (@nsjersey) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  According to NJ.com, as of 5:45ET Wednesday, it’s possible the gubernatorial race in the Garden State may not be decided Wednesday. With 98% of the precincts in, Ciattarelli – a former member of the state Assembly – was leading Murphy by about 1,200 votes, according to totals from the Associated Press. That amounted to 49.7% for Ciattarelli and 49.6% for Murphy. To be sure, thousands of votes, many from Dem-leaning counties, remain uncounted.

  Meanwhile, the difference in tone between Ciattarelli and Murphy was palpable in their election-night speeches. First, Ciattarelli.

  Now Murphy, who clearly feels entitled to re-election after serving as governor through the COVID pandemic, after imposing some of the most unnecessary policies that clearly scared thousands of Democrats into vote absentee, or, perhaps, staying home entirely.

  Back in Va. voters celebrated Youngkin’s win with “Let’s Go Brandon” chants in a generally excitable crowd.

  Offering some insight into how Youngkin managed to pull off a victory: unlike Clinton crony McAuliffe, Youngkin actually inspired voters to show up to the polls.

  Here is a wild stat. In the 17 counties west of Roanoke (basically, the bottom left tail of the state on a map), Youngkin netted an extra 40k votes compared to Gillespie in 2017. He did it *entirely* through turnout. Dem votes were almost exactly flat, GOP votes up 40%.

  — George Pearkes (@pearkes) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, the city where George Floyd was killed by officer Derek Chauvin, setting off last summer’s wave of riots and “demonstrations”, voters in the city rejected a proposal to abolish the city’s police department and replace it with a “public safety” department focused on a “comprehensive public health approach”. In NYC, the election went largely as expected, with former police officer and moderate Democrat Eric Adams emerging victorious (although many believed the race was decided months ago when Adams clinched victory in the Democratic primary). At any rate, Adams’ GOP rival Curtis Sliwa, the founder of the Guardian Angels, showed up to vote with one of his 17 cats.

  Democrat Eric Adams romps home to victory in the race for New York City Mayor, beating out Republican rival Curtin Sliwa who turned up to vote for himself with one of his 17 cats https://t.co/0b1u5KzFhs pic.twitter.com/FpuvHJN4r2

  — Showbiz (@showbiznotices) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Circling back to Virginia for a moment, not only did voters reject McAuliffe and back GOP Youngkin, they also backed Republican Winsome Sears, a black woman and immigrant from Jamaica and former Marine, to be the state’s next Lieutenant Governor.

  Sears defeated Democrat Hala Ayala, winning just over 51.2% of the vote to Ayala’s 48.8%, according to a local NBC affiliate. While a woman of color was slated to take the lieutenant governor position regardless of who won (a first in Va. history) Sears won the thing, becoming the first black woman to be elected to any statewide office in Virginia, cementing a historic vote.

  HUGE UPSET: Republican @WinsomeSears has been elected Virginia’s next lieutenant governor!

  She was outspent 2:1 but overcame all odds and will be the first woman to hold the office in VA!

  Congrats, Winsome! pic.twitter.com/Mfb1EYtmgk

  — Republican State Leadership Committee (@RSLC) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Does she look like a ‘white supremacist’ to you?

  

  So, what’s the takeaway from all of this? Well, clearly, voters are uncomfortable with the Democrats’ courting of the progressive left, especially when it comes to issues like whether CRT should be taught in schools. Also, as Axios notes, Democrats are about to engage in a serious game of finger-pointing, since even with former President Trump largely silenced thanks to a social media blackout, they still couldn’t manage to win a solid victory in an off-year vote. The vote may be a “wake-up call” for the Dems’ Congressional leadership to push for swift passage of the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, a bipartisan deal passed by the Senate over the summer, but which has been held up by progressives who are demanding that Biden’s social agenda (a package that currently stands at about $1.75 trillion) see a vote first, for fear that it might collapse, or see massive cutbacks, without the ‘carrot’ of the infrastructure bill.

  “Clearly, the president’s drop in favorability made it very difficult for the Democratic nominee to stay above water,” Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly told Axios D.C.’s Cuneyt Dil at McAuliffe’s election night event in Tysons Corner, Va.

  As a reminder, here’s what President Biden’s favorability looks like.

  

  Speaing On Rachel Maddow’s MSNBC show last night, political analyst Larry Sabato said somebody from “McAuliffe’s camp” described the race in Va. a “blood bath” for the Dems.

  DELICIOUSO!!!😭🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/bGz9x3ldza

  — il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  While they might try to brush it off as an off-year fluke, the Democrats know the implications of Tuesday night’s vote. After all, Kamala Harris herself said the following about last night’s vote in Virginia: “It is a bellwether for what happens in the rest of the country…what happens in VA will in large part determine what happens in 2022, 2024 & on.”

  But a Congressional aide put it far more bluntly in an anonymous quote to Axios: “It’s time for Democrats to stop f****** around” and “show the voters we actually can govern.”

  Another senior aide said it’s “insanely clear” the party must change its focus “not on center-left or progressive goals,” but on “what gets real things done for families.”

  At this point, President Biden has signed a lot of executive orders, but what has his administration actually accomplished?

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 18:43

• China Facing "Downward Pressure", Premier Warns
  China Facing “Downward Pressure”, Premier Warns

  With the Fed supposedly telegraphing that the US economy is strong enough to withstand a modest decline in the monthly QE, China is headed in the other direction, and overnight Premier Li Keqiang said the economy faces new downward pressures and “has to cut taxes and fees to address the problems faced by small and medium-sized companies.”

  While Li did not specify the extent of the new “downward pressure” or its cause, but as Bloomberg notes, the phrase is used by Chinese officials to refer to a slowing economy, which it clearly is in China as the following chart shows; he has used the phrase before, including several times in 2019.

  

  The economy needs “cross-cyclical adjustments” to continue in a proper range, Li said during a visit to China’s top market regulator, state broadcaster CCTV reported. That phrase is associated with a more conservative fiscal and monetary approach that focuses more on the long-term outlook instead of immediate economic performance.

  While Li didn’t say anything we didn’t already know (just last week Goldman cut China’s 2022 GDP forecast to just 5.2%) the premier’s admission was surprisingly candid as Beijing has traditionally been coy about revealing economic weakness. China’s economy has been slowing in recent months due to Beijing’s push to slow growth in the real-estate sector.

  Li called for the creation of a better business environment through equal treatment of all types of companies and better market oversight, mentioning efforts to combat monopolies, unfair competition and hoarding. A statement from China’s government urging local authorities to ensure there was adequate food supply during the winter and encouraging people to stock up on some essentials prompted a “panic buying” scramble on Tuesday as locals rushed to hoard whatever they could, with the Ministry of Commerce later trying to calm concerns.

  Li’s remarks came after further signs of weakness in October due to power shortages which weighed on manufacturing, and strict coronavirus controls which put a brake on holiday spending; meanwhile the unprecedented collapse in China’s housing sector is getting worse by the day (as discussed just last night in “China Junk Bond Yields Hit All Time High As Property Default Contagion Spreads, Home Sales Plunge 32%”) and the only question is how much of a hit to China’s GDP will it be. As a reminder, a little over a month ago, Goldman laid out three scenarios that saw the adverse impact on China’s GDP anywhere between 1.4% and 4.1%.

  

  “There are no obvious growth drivers now, so the government is looking for one,” said Bruce Pang, head of macro and strategy research at China Renaissance Securities Hong Kong Ltd. “Small businesses’ investment can provide a source of healthier, longer-term growth, compared with government or property investment.”

  According to Peng, in the absence of a broad-based bazooka rate cut, authorities will encourage banks to lend more to small businesses, further reduce taxes and fees for them, and look to simplify administrative procedures to encourage more entrepreneurs.
  The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index fell to 49.2, the National Bureau of Statistics said Sunday, the second month it was below the key 50-mark that signals a contraction in production.

  Several investment banks have lowered their forecasts for China’s 2021 growth to below 8% in recent weeks. However, former Chinese central bank adviser Huang Yiping told Bloomberg News Tuesday that while China’s economy will slow further over the next few months, annual growth of around 8% is achievable.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 18:40

• Florida Homeowner Fined For Hanging Trump And "Let's Go Brandon" Banners On His Own Home
  Florida Homeowner Fined For Hanging Trump And “Let’s Go Brandon” Banners On His Own Home

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  There is an interesting constitutional fight brewing in Florida.

  I have a column out today on the “Let’s Go, Brandon” movement.

  Marvin Peavy is part of that movement and displayed a banner with the chant (with a pro Trump banner) from his home in Seagrove Beach, Florida.

  Hanging from Peavy’s home is a banner proclaiming “Trump Won” and another proclaiming “Let’s Go Brandon.”  The latter chant is a euphemism for “F— Joe Biden.”

  “I’m here on the beach, and I got a lot of traffic, and people needed to see what I believe in,” Peavy said.

  “That’s free speech, and I wanted everyone to know that I’m a republican and I’m supporting Donald Trump.”

  

  He is now facing a $50 a day fine for violating an ordinance against such banners.

  He has pledged to continue to fight the enforcement.

  The question is whether the ordinance is constitutional.

  The code states that following signs are “the prohibited in the Route 30-A Scenic Corridor”:

  B. Prohibited signs. In addition to the signs prohibited in Section 6.03.00, the following signs shall be prohibited in the Route 30-A Scenic Corridor:

  1. Permanent off-premise outdoor advertising signs (an off-premise sign is any sign located on property other than that to which the sign relates);

  2. Pole signs;

  3. Water towers as commercial advertising;

  4. Wall murals as commercial advertising;

  5. Off-premise signs;

  6. Temporary mobile or portable signs;

  7. Interior lit single panel plastic or Lexan face;

  8. Streamers, feather flags, pennants, ribbons, spinners and other similar devices;

  9. Flashing signs;

  10. Signs containing reflective elements that sparkle or twinkle in the sunlight;

  11. Roof signs;

  12. Signs containing moving parts.

  The law is notably neutral on content. That is a key distinction given prior Supreme Court rulings like Reed v Town of Gilbert.  In that case, the court ruled unanimously that an Arizona ordinance was unconstitutional. Under the ordinance, “ideological signs” and “political signs” were subject to different limitations.

  Writing for the Court in Reed, Justice Clarence Thomas stressed that “[g]overnment regulation of speech is content based if a law applies to particular speech because of the topic discussed or the idea or message expressed.”

  The content-based regulation triggered “strict scrutiny” analysis requiring that the government must demonstrate that the law has been “narrowly tailored” to serve a “compelling interest.”

  Here all signs are limited or banned in this area regardless of their message. What remains, however, is the denial of homeowners to be able to speak politically through signage on their own homes. The city would argue that they can still speak in other ways. Moreover, there is a general exemption in the ordinance for

  “Temporary signs for political candidacy, nonprofit organizations, religious institutions and other signs conveying a non-commercial message for a one-time event provided that such signs are removed within 15 days following the campaign, drive, or event.”

  Again, there is no content regulation here and political signs are allowed during campaign seasons.

  But how about those who want to express political views between elections? Such sentiments are supporting ongoing movements, including “Let’s Go Brandon” which is a criticism of media bias. This is an aesthetic regulation that negates forms of political expression. While the odds may be against Peavy, he may force a reconsideration of such speech rights.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 18:20

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Iron Ore Futures Stumble Sub $100 As China Steel Output Slumps 
  Iron Ore Futures Stumble Sub $100 As China Steel Output Slumps 

  Iron ore futures in Singapore dove under $100 per ton Tuesday as Chinese steel output in October recorded its lowest level since March 2020, signaling increasing economic headwinds for the world’s second-largest economy. 

  Futures for iron ore tumbled for a fifth day as Beijing increased efforts to cap annual steel volumes. Production curbs have been more frequent in the back half of the year as prices have been more than halved since summer. Beijing wants to ensure smelters do not smog up the skies during the Winter Olympics, expected to take place in 1Q22. 

  

  According to Bloomberg, quoting researcher Mysteel who analyzed 247 blast furnaces and 71 electric-arc furnaces, daily steel output in October dropped to the lowest since March 2020. 

  “There were frequent requests from local governments to curb production, while lackluster steel demand and softening prices have dampened mills’ willingness to produce,” Mysteel said. 

  “The probability that iron ore demand slides by at least 20% in the fourth quarter is increasing, judging from lower downstream demand,” said Orient Futures Co. analyst Xu Huimin. “We have to monitor if mills will actually reduce production on their own, which will worsen the market a step further.” 

  Since summer, prices in Singapore have slid by more than 50% on China’s push to curb emissions in energy-intensive industries. China’s real estate market, a top buyer of steel, is under strain from a government crackdown that has pared down leverage in the industry. The decline of iron ore futures has followed the decline in top property developer Evergrande Group’s 2023, 2024, and 2025 bonds. 

  

  The Evergrande debt debacle has spread across China’s entire property market, causing contagion among other highly leveraged developers. Credit agencies have downgraded highly leveraged companies operating in the space. Many of these companies are pulling back on building which means their demand for commodities, such as steel, copper, cement, and plastics, declines. 

  The slowdown in China has resulted in significant declines for miners, such as Rio Tinto Group shares headed for their lowest close since May 2020. 

  The official manufacturing purchasing managers’ index slipped for a second month in a contraction, under the 50-mark. How long until the PBOC makes it rain to save the Chinese economy? 

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 02:45

• German Companies Creating Segregated Canteens For Vaccinated And Unvaccinated
  German Companies Creating Segregated Canteens For Vaccinated And Unvaccinated

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

  Major companies in Germany are segregating their employees by creating canteens for vaccinated people and separate areas for the unvaccinated, who will be forced to continue to follow social distancing and mask mandates.

  

  Pharmaceuticals giant Bayer, energy company Eon, and travel company Alltours are all set to impose the new rules, which will see the unvaccinated treated like second class citizens.

  “In the ‘2G’ areas for vaccinated and recovered people, employees would be allowed to eat together under completely normal conditions, while those who are not vaccinated or do not provide information about their vaccination status would have to continue to live with rules on social distancing, mask wearing and partitions during meals,” reports the Local.

  Bayer also announced that its employees have also started forming work groups that “exclude unvaccinated staff.”

  People visiting Christmas markets in Berlin who haven’t been vaccinated will also be denied entry.

  As we previously highlighted, despite facing brazen discrimination, 90 per cent of Germans who haven’t had the vaccine say they have no plans to get it in the near future.

  As we highlighted back in January, German authorities announced that COVID lockdown rulebreakers would be arrested and detained in refugee camps located across the country.

  Earlier this summer it was also confirmed that the unvaccinated would be deprived of basic lifestyle activities like visiting cinemas and restaurants.

  The editor-in-chief of Germany’s top newspaper Bild shocked some people by apologizing for the news outlet’s fear-driven coverage of COVID, specifically to children who were told “that they were going to murder their grandma.”

  During a meeting with other world leaders in Rome, Angela Merkel engaged in COVID security theater by briefly wearing a mask when she exited her vehicle, only to remove it as soon as she entered the building.

  Angela Merkel rides maskless in a car over to a conference hall.

  She puts on her mask to leave the car and walk outside.

  Upon entering the hall she takes off her mask to greet the Italian Prime Minister and gives him a fist bump.

  That’s not how masks work. pic.twitter.com/eFk93iyaHr

  — Dr. David Samadi (@drdavidsamadi) October 31, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  *  *  *

  Brand new merch now available! Get it at https://www.pjwshop.com/

  In the age of mass Silicon Valley censorship It is crucial that we stay in touch. I need you to sign up for my free newsletter here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown. Get early access, exclusive content and behinds the scenes stuff by following me on Locals.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 02:00

• The Most Important Battle For Press Freedom In Our Time
  The Most Important Battle For Press Freedom In Our Time

  Authored by Chris Hedges via MintPressNews.com,

  For the past two days, I have been watching the extradition hearing for Julian Assange via video link from London. The United States is appealing a lower court ruling that denied the US request to extradite Assange not, unfortunately, because in the eyes of the court he is innocent of a crime, but because, as Judge Vanessa Baraitser in January concluded, Assange’s precarious psychological state would deteriorate given the “harsh conditions” of the inhumane US prison system, “causing him to commit suicide.”

  The United States has charged Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act and one count of trying to hack into a government computer, charges that could see him imprisoned for 175 years.

  

  Assange, with long white hair, appeared on screen the first day from the video conference room in HM Prison Belmarsh. He was wearing a white shirt with an untied tie around his neck. He looked gaunt and tired. He did not appear in court, the judges explained, because he was receiving a “high dose of medication.”

  On the second day he was apparently not present in the prison’s video conference room.

  Assange is being extradited because his organization WikiLeaks released the Iraq War Logs in October 2010, which documented numerous US war crimes — including video images of the gunning down of two Reuters journalists and 10 other unarmed civilians in the Collateral murder video, the routine torture of Iraqi prisoners, the covering up of thousands of civilian deaths and the killing of nearly 700 civilians that had approached too closely to US checkpoints. He is also being targeted by US authorities for other leaks, especially those that exposed  the hacking tools used by the CIA known as Vault 7, which enables the spy agency to compromise cars, smart TVs, web browsers and the operating systems of most smart phones, as well as operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS and Linux.

  If Assange is extradited and found guilty of publishing classified material, it will set a legal precedent that will effectively end national security reporting, allowing the government to use the Espionage Act to charge any reporter who possesses classified documents, and any whistleblower who leaks classified information.

  If the appeal by the United States is accepted Assange will be retried in London. The ruling on the appeal is not expected until at least January.

  Assange’s September 2020 trial painfully exposed how vulnerable he has become after 12 years of detention, including seven in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He has in the past attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. He suffers from hallucinations and depression, takes antidepressant medication and the antipsychotic quetiapine. After he was observed pacing his cell until he collapsed, punching himself in the face and banging his head against the wall he was transferred for several months to the medical wing of the Belmarsh prison. Prison authorities found “half of a razor blade” hidden under his socks. He has repeatedly called the suicide hotline run by the Samaritans because he thought about killing himself “hundreds of times a day.”

  James Lewis, the lawyer for the United States, attempted to discredit the detailed and disturbing medical and psychological reports on Assange presented to the court in September 2020, painting him instead as a liar and malingerer. He excoriated the decision of Judge Baraitser to bar extradition, questioned her competence, and breezily dismissed the mountains of evidence that high-security prisoners in the United Sates, like Assange, subjected to Special Administrative Measures (SAMs), and held in virtual isolation in supermax prisons, suffer psychological distress. He charged Dr. Michael Kopelman, emeritus professor of neuropsychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience, King’s College London, who examined Assange and testified for the defense, with deception for “concealing” that Assange fathered two children with his fiancée Stella Morris while in refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He said that, should the Australian government request Assange, he could serve his prison time in Australia, his home country, after his appeals had been exhausted, but stopped short of promising that Assange would not be held in isolation or subject to SAMs.

  The authority repeatedly cited by Lewis to describe the conditions under which Assange will be held and tried in the United States was Gordon Kromberg, the Assistant United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia. Kromberg is the government’s grand inquisitor in cases of terrorism and national security. He has expressed open contempt for Muslims and Islam and decried what he calls “the Islamization of the American justice system.” He oversaw the 9-year persecution of the Palestinian activist and academic Dr. Sami Al-Arian and at one point refused his request to postpone a court date during the religious holiday of Ramadan. “They can kill each other during Ramadan, they can appear before the grand jury. All they can’t do is eat before sunset,” Kromberg said in a 2006 conversation, according to an affidavit filed by one of Arian’s attorneys, Jack Fernandez.

  Kromberg criticized Daniel Hale, the former Air Force analyst who recently was sentenced to 45 months in a supermax prison for leaking information about the indiscriminate killings of civilians by drones, saying Hale had not contributed to public debate, but had “endanger[ed] the people doing the fight.” He ordered Chelsea Manning jailed after she refused to testify in front of a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. Manning attempted to commit suicide in March 2020 while being held in the Virginia jail.

  Having covered the case of Syed Fahad Hashmi, who was arrested in London in 2006, I have a good idea of what waits Assange if he is extradited. Hashmi also was held in Belmarsh and extradited in 2007 to the United States where he spent three years in solitary confinement under SAMs. His “crime” was that an acquaintance who stayed in his apartment with him while he was a graduate student in London had raincoats, ponchos and waterproof socks in luggage at the apartment. The acquaintance planned to deliver the items to al-Qaida. But I doubt the government was concerned with waterproof socks being shipped to Pakistan. The reason, I suspect, Hashmi was targeted was because, like the Palestinian activist Dr. Sami Al-Arian, and like Assange, he was fearless and zealous in his defense of those being bombed, shot, terrorized and killed throughout the Muslim world while he was a student at Brooklyn College.

  Hashmi was deeply religious, and some of his views, including his praise of the Afghan resistance, were controversial, but he had a right to express these sentiments. More important, he had a right to expect freedom from persecution and imprisonment because of his opinions, just as Assange should have the freedom, like any publisher, to inform the public about the inner workings of power. Facing the possibility of a 70-year sentence in prison and having already spent four years in jail, much of it in solitary confinement, Hashmi accepted a plea bargain on one count of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism. Judge Loretta Preska, who sentenced the hacker Jeremy Hammond and human rights attorney Steven Donziger, gave him the maximum 15-year sentence. Hashmi was held for nine years in Guantanamo-like conditions in the supermax ADX [Administrative Maximum] facility in Florence, Colorado, where Assange, if found guilty in an American court, will almost certainly be imprisoned. Hashmi was released in 2019.

  The pre-trial detention conditions Hashmi endured were designed to break him. He was electronically monitored 24-hours a day. He could only receive or send mail with his immediate family. He was prohibited from speaking with other prisoners through the walls. He was forbidden from taking part in group prayer. He was permitted one hour of exercise a day, in a solitary cage without fresh air. He has unable to see most of the evidence used to indict him which was classified under the Classified Information Procedures Act, enacted to prevent US intelligence officers under prosecution from threatening to reveal state secrets to manipulate the legal proceedings. The harsh conditions eroded his physical and psychological health. When he appeared in the final court proceeding to accept a guilty plea he was in a near catatonic state, clearly unable to follow the proceedings around him.

  If the government will go to this length to persecute someone who was alleged to have been involved in sending waterproof socks to al-Qaida, what can we expect the government to do to Assange?

  A society that prohibits the capacity to speak in truth extinguishes the capacity to live in justice. The battle for Assange’s liberty has always been much more than the persecution of a publisher. It is the most important battle for press freedom of our era. And if we lose this battle, it will be devastating, not only for Assange and his family, but for us.

  Tyrannies invert the rule of law. They turn the law into an instrument of injustice. They cloak their crimes in a faux legality. They use the decorum of the courts and trials, to mask their criminality. Those, such as Assange, who expose that criminality to the public are dangerous, for without the pretext of legitimacy the tyranny loses credibility and has nothing left in its arsenal but fear, coercion and violence. The long campaign against Assange and WikiLeaks is a window into the collapse of the rule of law, the rise of what the political philosopher Sheldon Wolin calls our system of inverted totalitarianism, a form of totalitarianism that maintains the fictions of the old capitalist democracy, including its institutions, iconography, patriotic symbols and rhetoric, but internally has surrendered total control to the dictates of global corporations and the security and surveillance state.

  There is no legal basis to hold Assange in prison. There is no legal basis to try him, an Australian citizen, under the US Espionage Act. The CIA spied on Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy through a Spanish company, UC Global, contracted to provide embassy security. This spying included recording the privileged conversations between Assange and his lawyers as they discussed his defense. This fact alone invalidated the trial. Assange is being held in a high security prison so the state can, as Nils Melzer, the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture, has testified, continue the degrading abuse and torture it hopes will lead to his psychological if not physical disintegration.The architects of imperialism, the masters of war, the corporate-controlled legislative, judicial and executive branches of government and their obsequious courtiers in the media, are guilty of egregious crimes.

  Say this simple truth and you are banished, as many of us have been, to the margins of the media landscape. Prove this truth, as Assange, Chelsea Manning, Jeremy Hammond and Edward Snowden have by allowing us to peer into the inner workings of power, and you are hunted down and persecuted.

  Assange’s “crime” is that he exposed the more than 15,000 unreported deaths of Iraqi civilians. He exposed the torture and abuse of some 800 men and boys, aged between 14 and 89, at Guantánamo. He exposed that Hillary Clinton in 2009 ordered US diplomats to spy on U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon and other U.N. representatives from China, France, Russia, and the UK, spying that included obtaining DNA, iris scans, fingerprints, and personal passwords, part of the long pattern of illegal surveillance that included the eavesdropping on UN Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. He exposed that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the CIA orchestrated the June 2009 military coup in Honduras that overthrew the democratically-elected president Manuel Zelaya, replacing it with a murderous and corrupt military regime. He exposed that George W. Bush, Barack Obama and General David Petraeus prosecuted a war in Iraq that under post-Nuremberg laws is defined as a criminal war of aggression, a war crime, which authorized hundreds of targeted assassinations, including those of US citizens in Yemen. He exposed that the United States secretly launched missile, bomb, and drone attacks on Yemen, killing scores of civilians. He exposed that Goldman Sachs paid Hillary Clinton $657,000 to give talks, a sum so large it can only be considered a bribe, and that she privately assured corporate leaders she would do their bidding while promising the public financial regulation and reform. He exposed the internal campaign to discredit and destroy British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn by members of his own party. He exposed how the hacking tools used by the CIA and the National Security Agency permits the wholesale government surveillance of our televisions, computers, smartphones and anti-virus software, allowing the government to record and store our conversations, images and private text messages, even from encrypted apps.

  He exposed the truth. He exposed it over and over and over until there was no question of the endemic illegality, corruption and mendacity that defines the global ruling elite. And for these truths alone he is guilty.

  Tyler Durden
  Wed, 11/03/2021 – 00:05

• China Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Missile Silo Construction While Demanding US Adopt 'No First Use'
  China Rapidly Expanding Nuclear Missile Silo Construction While Demanding US Adopt ‘No First Use’

  In recent months – particularly following the US-Australia AUKUS pact which will see Washington transfer nuclear submarines to Canberra – multiple reports have suggested that China is currently rethinking its nuclear policy. 

  Back in June, for example, The Washington Post detailed that “China has begun construction of what independent experts say are more than 100 new silos for intercontinental ballistic missiles in a desert near the northwestern city of Yumen, a building spree that could signal a major expansion of Beijing’s nuclear capabilities.” That prior report has this week been bolstered by fresh satellite imagery coming out of sites in China’s western desert. 

  

  With a much more active US military presence in the Indo-Pacific region in recent years, some Chinese officials and pundits are urging a fresh look at the country’s longstanding ‘no first use’ nuclear policy. For now Beijing appears committed to it; however, it’s urgently calling on other nuclear powers to adopt the same policy as a means to avoid any future nuclear war scenario.

  A report in the South China Morning Post recently highlighted this based on a defense policy memo that invited discussion of Chinese leadership: 

  China has underlined its “no first use” nuclear policy in a position paper amid discussion over its commitments in a rising nuclear arms race.

  In the “Position Paper on China and United Nations Cooperation” issued by the foreign ministry on Friday, China declared it had a history of initiating the no first use (NFU) principle, and said nuclear-weapon states should abandon pre-emptive deterrence policies.

  “Bear in mind that ‘a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought’,” the paper said.

  At the same time fresh reports this week suggests what Western nuclear watchdog analysts are calling a new push for “unprecedented nuclear build-up” in China.

  This is based on satellite imagery examined by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), said to feature nuclear launch-capable silos for long-range missiles in Western China, as CNN describes: 

  Rapid construction at three suspected silo fields in China — which could eventually be capable of launching long-range nuclear missiles — appears to indicate that Beijing is putting substantial efforts and resources into the development of its nuclear capabilities, according to analysis of new commercial satellite images.

  Experts from the Federation of American Scientists (FAS), a nonpartisan national security research and advocacy organization, found that China has made significant progress on suspected silo fields in the western part of the country.

  

  Images via Planet Labs/Federation of American Scientists

  

  But the report notes this important caveat: the study of the satellite images say “the missile silo fields are still many years away from becoming fully operational and it remains to be seen how China will arm and operate them.”

  Perhaps this will depend on who answers China’s ongoing call for a global embrace of ‘no first use’ (NFU) doctrine. Crucially, the United Sates has long resisted adoption of NFU – with multiple administrations going back to the Cold War long arguing that it “reserves the right to use” nuclear weapons first in the case of conflict.

  But new Washington Post reporting on Tuesday suggests the Biden administration could be ready to revisit the issue. 

  China’s nuclear deterrence mainly counts on the US media to help propagate, I really don’t know if we should thank CNN😀 https://t.co/38rwFgI4Yb

  — Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) November 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Meanwhile, China state media – in particular a Global Times op-ed from days ago – is calling for the US to “take the lead” among its reluctant allies in implementing no first use:

  China has announced the “no first use” nuclear policy at a very early phase. It has adhered to this policy since the first day it owned nuclear weapons. US allies should think this way: If China walks away from this policy, how much pressure will it add to regional security? Similarly, if the US, as the world’s No.1 military power, announced restrictions on the use of nuclear weapons, it will without doubt create constructive opportunities to global security, with advantages outweighing disadvantages.

  Nuclear posture is the thorniest security dilemma – particularly issues such as the number of nuclear warheads and anti-missiles. If the US can take the lead in restricting the use of nuclear weapons in this era, it is likely to expand the route undertaken by China in the past and push forward a new period of nuclear security. US allies such as Japan and Australia are falling into the trap of their own petty calculations, but they will not feel more secure if the US does not try to make the commitment of restricting the use of nuclear weapons.

  Yes, you really should https://t.co/bqI72cJSgO

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) November 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  This appears at once an open appeal and a “threat” – with China seeming to be ready to blame Washington for any near-future nuclear build-up between the two rivals.

  * * *

  Here’s Rabobank discussing the further implications…

  The Financial Times lead story this weekend was that US allies are lobbying the White House NOT to shift to a “No First Use” (NFU) nuclear policy. After Afghanistan, this is another enormous shock for an ostensibly “America is Back” administration. Military strategists back to Vegetius (“Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum”) stress America’s nuke stockpile underpins its military might; and Korea, Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Central Asia aside, that is still what prevents more wars more often everywhere else.

  A nuclear arms race is unavoidable without serious intervention https://t.co/x0fJhpLXX8 | opinion

  — Financial Times (@FT) October 27, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  If the US moves to NFU, any other power can do whatever it wants short of nukes, and the US can only respond with already-overstretched conventional power. Consider that as Russia again builds up forces near Ukraine; when looking at tensions in the South China Sea; and when China’s Global Times runs an editorial, “US should announce ‘no first use of nuclear weapons,’ with no strings attached”. There are always strings attached to shifts in such existential policies: markets would be well advised to understand the implied volatility.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 23:45

• FOIA'd CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is "Problematic"
  FOIA’d CDC Emails: Our Definition of Vaccine is “Problematic”

  Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

  The CDC caused an uproar in early September 2021, after it changed its definitions of “vaccination” and “vaccine.” For years, the CDC had set definitions for vaccination/vaccine that discussed immunity. This all changed on September 1, 2021.

  

  The prior CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination (August 26, 2021):

  Vaccine: A product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but can also be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

  Vaccination: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.

  The CDC Definitions of Vaccine and Vaccination since September 1, 2021:

  Vaccine: A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases. Vaccines are usually administered through needle injections, but some can be administered by mouth or sprayed into the nose.

  Vaccine: The act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.

  This caused quite the controversy. Representative Paul Massie was among the first to observe the change, noting the definition went from “immunity” to “protection”.

  Check out @CDCgov’s evolving definition of “vaccination.” They’ve been busy at the Ministry of Truth: pic.twitter.com/4k2xf8rvsL

  — Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 8, 2021

  To many observers, it appeared the CDC changed the definitions because of the waning effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccines. The effectiveness of the Pfizer vaccine falls over time, with an Israeli study reported in August 2021 as showing the vaccine being “only 16% effective against symptomatic infection for those individuals who had two doses of the shot back in January.”  The CDC recognizes their waning effectiveness, thus explaining their promotion of booster shots.

  Of course, the usual suspects defended the CDC. The Washington Post, for example, cast doubt that the CDC changed the definition because of issues with the COVID-19 vaccines. The CDC tried to downplay the change, stating “slight changes in wording over time … haven’t impacted the overall definition.”

  Internal CDC E-Mails

  CDC emails we obtained via the Freedom of Information Act reveal CDC concerns with  how the COVID-19 vaccines didn’t match the CDC’s own definition of “vaccine”/“vaccination”. It was the CDC’s Ministry of Truth hard at work in the face of legitimate public questions.

  In one August 2021 e-mail, a CDC employee cited to complaints that “Right-wing covid-19 deniers are using your ‘vaccine’ definition to argue that mRNA vaccines are not vaccines…”

  

  After taking some suggestions, the CDC’s Lead Health Communication Specialist went up the food chain to propose changes to the definitions: “I need to update this page Immunization Basics | CDC since these definitions are outdated and being used by some to say COVID-19 vaccines are not vaccines per CDC’s own definition.”

  

  Getting no response, there was a follow-up e-mail a week later: “The definition of vaccine we have posted is problematic and people are using it to claim the COVID-19 vaccine is not a vaccine based on our own definition.”

  

  The change of the “vaccination” definition was eventually approved on August 31. The next day, on September 1, they approved the change to the “vaccine” definition from discussing immunity to protection (seen below).

  

  There you have it. Affirmative action for the multinational corporations. Why have them improve their vaccines when you can just change the definition of vaccine to fit their ineffective vaccines?  

  Congrats to all the skeptics out there – you raised enough concerns that the the CDC went and tried to change reality.

  See emails below:

  CDC Emails by Techno Fog

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 23:25

• Elon Musk's Mysterious Tweet Of Chinese Poem About "Getting Along" Has Gone Viral On Weibo
  Elon Musk’s Mysterious Tweet Of Chinese Poem About “Getting Along” Has Gone Viral On Weibo

  Once again, Elon Musk is drumming up mystery with his relationship to China. This time, he did it Tweeting out a posting of an ancient Chinese poem that caught the attention of many of his followers in the East.

  On Monday night, Musk Tweeted out an abbreviated version of the ‘Seven Steps Verse’ in Chinese on both his Twitter and his Weibo account, according to Reuters.

  After writing the word “Humankind” in English, Musk Tweeted out the poem:

  Humankind
  煮豆燃豆萁
  豆在釜中泣
  本是同根生
  相煎何太急

  — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The poem describes “the relationship between two brothers from a royal family during China’s warring Three Kingdoms period that is taught in all of China’s primary schools about the importance of getting along”, Reuters wrote.

  This begs the obvious question of whether or not Musk is seeking a truce with China, or whether or not the CEO – once shunned by the Chinese propaganda machine (potentially for his love of Bitcoin) – has seen his relationship with the country again land on the rocks. 

  Either way, his posting of the poem went viral and got over 100 million views on Weibo. Twitter is blocked in China.

  Guesses about what Musk meant by the poem ranged from him weighing in on the Doge vs. Shiba Inu debate, all the way to him potentially offering an olive branch to the United Nations World Food Programme’s executive director, with whom Musk had an online spat with over the last 48 hours.

  Musk has 1.9 million followers on Weibo, where he “frequently praises China”, the report noted. 

  But again, we can’t help but wonder whether there are…other forces at work here…

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 23:05

• Is Failure Baked In The Cake At Glasgow?
  Is Failure Baked In The Cake At Glasgow?

  Authored by Pat Buchanan,

  “Colossal Stakes as Leaders Meet to Talk Climate,” ran the headline.

  “The Last Best Hope,” ran the subhead, which turned out to be a quote from President Joe Biden’s climate czar John Kerry.

  But these alarmist headings were not atop an editorial. They topped the lead news story in Sunday’s New York Times, the opening line of which set the tone for Glasgow: “The future is on the line.”

  Somini Sengupta, climate reporter, then laid out the “colossal stakes” of the summit.

  “As presidents and prime ministers arrive in Glasgow this week for a pivotal climate summit, the outcome will determine, to a large extent, how the world’s seven billion people will survive on a hotter planet and whether far worse levels of warming can be averted …

  “Already, the failure to slow rising temperatures — brought on by the burning of oil, gas and coal — has led to deadly floods, fires, heat, and drought around the world.”

  The hype is on. And the establishment media are playing their assigned role – portraying a failure at Glasgow as a guarantee of the looming apocalypse.

  The first leader the Times quoted was from Barbados.

  “That we are now so perilously close to the edge for a number of countries,” said Prime Minister Mia Mottley, “is perhaps the tragedy of our times.”

  The theology of the climate crisis runs like this.

  The planet has warmed by 1.1 degree Celsius since the Industrial Revolution. If warming rises to more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above 1900 levels, more and more terrible weather disasters will occur: wildfires, hurricanes of growing severity, droughts, coastal and river flooding, and islands sinking into the sea.

  The only way to stave off “climate catastrophe” is for all nations to cut carbon emissions radically now and for the world to reach net zero emissions by midcentury.

  A fast phaseout of the major emitters of carbon dioxide — the burning of coal, oil and gas to heat homes, run cars and generate power — and replacement of these fossil fuels with clean energy — solar, wind, nuclear — is a moral and political imperative.

  But if such a radical transformation of national economies is the only way to avert the impending crisis, we should brace ourselves and prepare for that crisis. For there is no way the demanded changes in energy consumption are going to be made by 2030.

  Consider.

  The world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide is China, which burns half of the world’s coal and is building new coal-fired plants even as the 30,000 summiteers gather in Glasgow.

  China was given a license in the Paris climate accord of 2015 to burn all the coal it wishes until 2030, after which it has agreed to begin reducing carbon emissions. But the idea that China can or will convert in a few decades to wind, solar and nuclear power to run the world’s largest manufacturing plant seems preposterous.

  The U.S., the world’s second largest emitter of carbon dioxide, gets 81% of its energy from oil, coal and natural gas. We depend on those fuels to heat our homes, run our vehicles and power our industry.

  In his Build Back Better bill, Biden inserted a provision that would have imposed annually rising taxes on carbon producers and used the revenue to reward companies that reduced their reliance on fossil fuels.

  The proposal had to be pulled out, lest it drag Biden’s entire bill down to defeat. Lest we forget, Sen. Joe Manchin is from West Virginia.

  India, the world’s third largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is also, like China, dependent on coal. But, though its population is as large as China’s, India is behind China industrially, and the standard of living of its 1.4 billion people is below that of China.

  To demand that India begin to end its burning of coal and rely more on solar and wind is to demand that New Delhi accept a future where India’s standard of living remains lower than that of China.

  As for Russia, the fourth largest emitter of carbon dioxide, it is rich in fossil fuels and the leading supplier of natural gas to Europe. But Moscow manipulates the supplies of its natural gas to its customers for reasons of both revenue and politics.

  Neither Chinese President Xi Jinping nor Russian President Vladimir Putin will even be present in Glasgow.

  Saudi Arabia, the Gulf states and other OPEC nations depend for their national income on oil exports. If fossil fuels become forbidden fuels, what is to become of these nations?

  Will they accept a future where their primary natural resource is gradually outlawed by the rest of the world? Will they be content to rely on the industrialized world to provide them with windmills and solar panels to power their economies?

  

  The world’s losers from this Glasgow summit are likely to be the billions of people who will never know the benefits of fossil fuels that produced the Industrial Revolution and created the affluent societies of the 20th century.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 22:45

• CIA Chief In Moscow For High Level Meeting, Day After Putin Condemned US Missile Expansion In Europe
  CIA Chief In Moscow For High Level Meeting, Day After Putin Condemned US Missile Expansion In Europe

  Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director William Burns was in Moscow on Tuesday for a previously unannounced visit where he met with Russian Security Council Secretary and former Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Nikolai Patrushev.

  The closed-door, secretive meeting which was revealed after it concluded, is a first time event since Burns was appointed head of the CIA. It comes after a reported half-dozen phone calls since Biden took office between US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan and Patrushev – whose position involves coordinating high level national security policy for Putin. 

  

  Neither the Russian Security Council nor the US Embassy released any details on the meeting. It comes on the heels of last month’s visit of the State Department’s Under Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland to Moscow for rare, high-level talks.

  There was simply the following confirmation released, agreed upon by both sides:

  Burns and Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev discussed “Russian-American relations,” it said in a terse statement.

  It also appears part of the continuing initiative since Putin and Biden met in Geneva in June to rescue US-Russian relations and pursue open communications, which have hit a low-point particularly after a series of targeted US sanctions on Moscow officials going back a half-decade. 

  CIA Director Burns is already considered to have extensive contacts among Russian officials, having served as the US Ambassador to Russia from 2005 to 2008.

  The two sides’ diplomats for much of the past year have also been holding closed-door arms control talks in Geneva following the Trump administration’s pullout of key Cold War era treaties, in particular the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) as well as the Open Skies treaty.

  

  Crucially on Monday Vladimir Putin told a meeting of defense ministry officials that Washington is eyeing expanding its offensive measures in Europe. “Everyone is aware of the US’ plans to deploy intermediate-range missiles in Europe, this poses a great danger and threat to us,” he said as cited in Russian media.

  “We are all well aware that some of our foreign partners do not cease attempts to break the parity, including through deploying elements of the global missile defence in direct vicinity to our borders. We cannot fail to notice these threats to Russia’s security and will react in an adequate manner,” Putin said.

  Very likely these concerns were at the top of the agenda during Burns’ meeting with Patrushev on Tuesday.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 22:25

• Dumb Ideas Never Die
  Dumb Ideas Never Die

  Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, ‘n Guns blog,

  If you think the wealth tax is already in the rearview mirror, keep your eyes on the road.  The beta test is over, but that was just the nose in the tent phase.

  

  Democrats knowledge of wealth is like the old saying about pornography, they know it when they see it (or in Hunter Biden’s case, when they film it).

  But unlike porn, they don’t know where it comes from.  Also unlike porn, they know wealth has to be destroyed.

  Because wealth is the thing that negates what they call equity.  Egalitarianism wasn’t enough.  Now we need equal outcomes where each player’s deficits are boosted to make results the same.

  What better way to make the rich pay their “fair share” than by seizing the wealth they obviously must have stolen?  And using that to even the playing field?

  It’s notable that instead of going after the two-and-twenty of the carried interest set, the Democrats sought a mark-to-market tax on equities (a tax on unrealized gains).  It was explained as a way to collect capital gains taxes earlier, in order to fund their hyperspend agenda.  But it was really a way to collect estate taxes early, as it was structurally designed to force the sale of assets and to destroy wealth.

  The wealth tax failed this time because its mechanics were too dumb.  That’s what you get when you let Sen. B.S. (obsessed with millionaires and billionaires) and noted Native American Sen. Elizabeth Warren write tax policy.

  People asked:

  What happens when the market declines?  Does the government cut everyone a check?  

  How is something non-fungible like a piece of real estate valued?  Works of art? 

  What if someone only has one non-financial asset that makes them wealthy?  

  Do they have to sell it to pay the tax?  Take out loans?

  This time they couldn’t answer any of those questions.  But the details don’t matter, the target does.

  Real wealth endures and can maintain itself.  It is the essence of capitalism, which is why they hate it.  Universal, equitable toil is what the left wants for all of us.  Anything that allows someone to sit at home and contemplate the universe is anathema.  To the salt mines, comrades!

  I jest of course, that’s gross exaggeration.  Since they don’t understand biology either, they hate salt too.

  Unfocused Rage

  The left lives in an 80s teen comedy, where hating Chad & Buffy is just so obvious it never has to be explained. But when you bring that zeitgeist into the policy-making sphere, your laws are still supposed to make (don’t laugh) at least a modicum of sense.

  If wealth was just a pile of gold coins, it might make sense to let Fauxcohontas pilfer a few for the common good (you’ve got too many, give me one!).  Just to shut her up.

  But real wealth has to be evaluated and if the methods to do so are not clear, or even agreed upon, how can the amount of tax be?

  Calculating Wealth

  Market capitalization is not really the amount of money in a market.  It’s an abstract concept that is pretty defective as a calculation of value.

  It is the marginal price of a unit of account times the total circulating supply.

  That means if we have 1,000 widgetcoins in circulation, and you offer me $2 for one of mine, the current widgetcoin market capitalization is $2,000.  

  But if I have 700 widgetcoins do I really have $1,400 in wealth?  

  It depends.  If the market is very liquid, and widgetcoins very desirable, maybe.  But if I dump 700 out of a total supply of 1,000 on the widgetcoin market, I will likely break that market.  The price of widgetcoins will probably approach $1 or lower pretty quick.

  But Democrats can’t understand why a 2% tax on my $1,400 widgetcoin fortune is unworkable.  For some reason, it’s an unattainable level of knowledge for them and we will have no peace until the average person understands this.

  A Class Study in Envy

  Ask yourself why you know how much money Bill Gates, Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos have.  For years, the “richest person in the US” has been defined using “market cap” style math.  This was always so unimaginable numbers could be thrown about in the service of class warfare narratives.

  It’s not that these people aren’t rich, it’s that their wealth is almost all in the stock of the companies they founded.

  Saying Elon Musk is worth $300B ignores a few things.  Democrats think he has $300B in the bank.  Whereas in reality, Musk has a lot of Tesla stock.

  The fact is Musk’s Tesla shares are not liquid in the same way as 1,000 shares of TSLA is in an average person’s IRA.

  As an officer and over 10% holder, there are a variety of SEC and other regulatory issues Musk faces when selling stock.  In many companies, operating agreements further restrict how much founder’s stock can be sold in a period.  Vesting schedules for early employees add more restrictions.

  The Democrats know all this.  They figure Musk can just take out loans against his shares and cut the Treasury a check.  And Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos can.

  But smaller founders who still qualify as “the evil rich” might not have that option.  And the more serious issue is that when you sell shares, you lose their votes.  And that is something company founders care deeply about, controlling the companies they started.

  If you have to sell 2% of your wealth (e.g. shares) every year to pay the Bernie & Lizzie tax, how long before you lose control of your company?

  What an added bonus for those who hate the productive.

  Fake Voices & Fake Valuations

  For a while we were asked to believe fraudster Elizabeth Holmes, of the occasionally mannish voice, was a billionaire.  At the time, that was held up as something to be lauded, a great achievement of female entrepreneurship.

  But Theranos was never worth $9B, except in the minds of reporters and first year MBA graduates.  Serious investors don’t take early stage valuations seriously.  

  If you raise $10M for 5% of your company, you don’t have $200M in the company treasury.  And a founder with 40% of the cap table doesn’t have $80M in the bank.

  But this is the type of “wealth” the Democrats want to tax.  Because they’re not just insanely jealous, they’re also insanely stupid.

  But are they really?

  Just Stop Believin’

  There has to come a time when we stop believing that no one has thought about the unintended consequences.  Their intent is to stop the creation of wealth.  And any narrative that serves that goal is on the table.

  With every frantic drama the Democrats create, we need to ask:  why are they doing this?  If they care about the poor, why do they pass policies that create more poverty?  If they want to reduce the take of rent-seekers, why protect the tax structures that enrich them?  If they are motivated to share the wealth, why do they only seek to destroy that which creates it?  

  The answer is always they just want to “get something done.”  Regardless of the cost.  

  If you think a wealth tax won’t affect you because it’s only for the rich, don’t be surprised when they lower the bar and call it a savings tax next.  

  The sad truth is that we live on a farm with people who want to eat the seed corn and if we don’t wake up to it, there’s not going to be a harvest in a couple seasons.

  *  *  *

  Join the Patreon Support our work by becoming a subscriber to the monthly newsletter.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 22:05

• FOMC Preview: "We'll Put $5 In The Atlanta Fed's Swear Jar"
  FOMC Preview: “We’ll Put $5 In The Atlanta Fed’s Swear Jar”

  By Philip Marey, senior US strategist at Rabobank

  Tapering during a slowdown

  • Although the economy has slowed down in the second half of the year, the FOMC is expected to announce the start of tapering at the November meeting. The Fed is likely to stress accumulated progress in the labor market and the transitory nature of supply side bottlenecks.

  • The FOMC is expected to announce a fixed monthly taper schedule that would reduce net asset purchases by $10 billion Treasuries and $5 billion agency MBS.

  • During the press conference Powell is likely to stress again that the end of tapering does not automatically mean the start of hiking. And that the high inflation readings are transitory.

  Introduction

  The US economy appears to have shifted to a slower pace of growth in the second half of the year as the impact of the fiscal stimulus measures is fading, the Delta variant of the coronavirus continues to spread, and inflation has risen to 5.4% due to supply constraints. Nevertheless, the  FOMC is expected to make a formal announcement of the start of tapering on Wednesday.  Clearly, inconvenient timing, but the Fed is likely to stress accumulated progress in the labor market and the transitory nature of supply side bottlenecks.

  Second half slowdown

  We learned this week that GDP growth slowed down to only 2.0% in Q3, from 6.7% in Q2 and  6.3% in Q1. The impact of the COVID relief packages launched under the Trump and Biden administrations is fading, while we are still waiting for the Democrats to agree on a large (but shrinking) health, education and child care bill, and their approval of the bipartisan Senate bill on infrastructure. Meanwhile, the Delta variant continues to spread as vaccination rates have found an insufficient plateau. This is delaying the much-awaited return of labor supply that was supposed to start in September, as we discussed in Labor shortages: temporary or permanent? Consequently, employment growth slowed down to 194K in September, from 366K in August and 1091K in July. What’s more, global supply chains are in disarray and CPI inflation rose to 5.4% in September (year-on-year). Today, the PCE deflator, the Fed’s preferred measure of inflation, rose to 4.4% in September (year-on-year), from 4.2% in August. This is more than double the Fed’s 2.0% inflation target.

  This is also having a negative impact on personal consumer spending, which slowed down to 1.6% in Q3, from 12.0% in Q2 and 11.4% in Q1. In fact, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNowcast actually put GDP growth in Q3 at 0.2% on October 27, the day before the official release by the BEA. This would have put the US economy close to stagnation. Although the BEA’s official estimate was 2.0%, we should see the FOMC statement acknowledge this slowdown in the growth of economic activity and employment.

  An inconvenient time to taper

  In the FOMC’s ideal world, they would step up the pace of asset purchases, instead of slowing them down, in case of an economic slowdown. However, in that world, inflation does not rise when the economy slows down either. Monetary policy is not very adequate if the adverse shock to the economy comes from the supply side. After all, monetary policy is aimed at influencing the demand side of the economy.

  However, tapering is not tightening and there has been progress in the labor market since last year. The FOMC can point to the decline in the official unemployment rate to 4.8% in September, from 6.7% in December 2020, as proof of substantial progress in the labor market (Figure 1). What’s more, inflation has been rampant for half a year now. Perhaps transitory, but enough catching up in terms of average inflation targeting for now. In fact, the minutes of the September meeting showed that most participants remarked that the standard of “substantial further progress” had been met with regard to the Committee’s price-stability goal or that it was likely to be met soon. So the Fed can still make the case for the start of tapering. Let’s just hope the economy is not going to slide back further during the winter months.

  Speeches and interviews with FOMC participants have confirmed that tapering is near. At the press conference on September 22 Powell stressed that the decision to start tapering was about accumulated progress in the labor market and that in his opinion the test was all but met. The FOMC speakers since that second disappointing Employment Report confirmed this interpretation. Fed Vice Chairman Clarida said that a gradual tapering of asset purchases that concludes around the middle of next year may soon be warranted. What’s more, according to the Minutes a number of participants indicated that they believed the test of “substantial further progress” toward maximum employment had already been met at the time of the September meeting. Finally, last week, Powell said he thinks it’s time to taper. So it is highly likely that the FOMC will announce tapering at the November meeting.

  

  A fixed monthly taper schedule  

  According to the minutes of the September 21-22 meeting of the FOMC, the Fed staff presented an illustrative path of tapering that was designed to be simple to communicate and entailed a gradual reduction in net asset purchases that would end around the middle of next year. Participants generally commented that the illustrative path provided a straightforward and appropriate template that policymakers might follow. Participants also noted that the Committee could adjust the pace of tapering if economic developments were to differ substantially from what they expected.

  In contrast to 2014, the FOMC is considering a taper schedule that involves a fixed monthly reduction in asset purchases, by $10 billion in the case of Treasury securities and $5 billion in the case of agency MBS. Participants noted that if a decision to begin tapering occurred at the next meeting (November 2-3), the process of tapering could commence with the monthly purchase calendars beginning in either mid-November or mid-December. Taking this together, the mid-November start would mean that $70 billion Treasuries and $35 billion will be purchased between mid-November and mid-December, followed by a monthly reduction by $10 billion Treasuries and $5 billion agency MBS, ending the net asset purchases by mid-June next year. Analogously, a mid-December start of the process would imply a mid-July end. Such a monthly schedule would be set in advance, because the FOMC only meets about every six weeks. For example, there is no meeting after mid-December and before mid-January.  

  This stands in contrast to the previous tapering process, carried out in 2014. Back then, the changes in the pace of monthly purchases only changed after FOMC meetings. With a fixed monthly schedule this taper process will be less flexible than last time, but the FOMC will still be able to change the schedule at any FOMC meeting if desired.

  Conclusion

  The FOMC meeting on November 2-3 is expected to conclude with a formal announcement of the start of tapering. There will be no update of the economic and rate projections (Table 1). During the press conference Powell is likely to stress again that the end of tapering does not automatically mean the start of hiking. And that the high inflation readings are transitory. We’ll put $5 in the Atlanta Fed’s swear jar.

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 21:45

• Whack-A-Mole: China LNG Prices Soar To A New Record, Crushing Distributor Margins
  Whack-A-Mole: China LNG Prices Soar To A New Record, Crushing Distributor Margins

  There is one recurring problem with central planning: the greater the level of intervention, the worse and more widespread the unexpected adverse consequences. Just last week, when we reported that Beijing had imposed price controls on its coal rationing, we said that the problem with such explicit subsidies which create an artificially low price, is that they don’t address the underlying problem (too much demand, not enough supply), but instead accelerate hoarding and lead to a run on the artificially underpriced commodity, forcing spikes in another energy commodity while resulting in an even faster drain of the commodity in question, in this case coal. In essence, it’s like a giant game of “whack a mole”.

  Just earlier today, we reported of precisely one such outcome when we discussed how China had inadvertently “sparked “Panic Buying” after telling households to stockpile food ahead of the winter.” This comes days after we reported that China’s coal and natgas energy crisis had quietly spread, with many gas stations across the country running out of diesel due to supply constraints caused by the surging demand for subsidized coal.

  And now we have another example of central planning’s unintended whack-a-mole consequences: Bloomberg reports that domestic liquefied natural gas prices in China are surging, driven by soaring prices in the international market, adding pressure on downstream city gas distributors.

  

  The national average price for the fuel, carried by trucks to factories or vehicle refueling stations, surged to a record 7,814 yuan per ton (about $26 per million British thermal units) on Monday, up almost 100% from a year ago, according to the Shanghai Petroleum & Natural Gas Exchange. In Beijing, prices saw a single-day jump of 1,000 yuan a ton on Monday, according to the CTL Group, a research unit of gas distributor ENN Group.

  The price surge comes as importers try to compensate for the rising cost of LNG imports. While China regulates the price of natural gas sold through pipelines, trucked LNG can rise and fall based on market forces.

  According to YuanTalks, Chai Shouping, chief financial officer of state-owned energy giant PetroChina, said at its earnings conference call on October 29 that, given the rising prices of LNG imports, PetroChina recorded a loss of 6.4 billion yuan for gas imports in the third quarter, bringing its total loss in the first three quarters of the year on gas imports to 3.2 billion yuan.

  Chai said that “we will supply natural gas at contract prices to downstream companies, including those that have signed long-term supply agreements with us, but for other companies, we will have to sell gas at prices based on our purchases prices.”

  While upstream resources companies plan to pass on rising costs to downstream companies, it’s difficult for downstream city gas distributers to pass on the rising prices to end users. Li Yalan, chairwoman of Beijing Gas Group, said at a gas industry forum on October 27 that problems faced by gas distributors this year are different from previous years and much more efforts are needed to purchase resources and balance resources.

  “Surging gas prices are unlikely to be transmitted to end users and that is causing serious problems for gas distributors whose gas purchasing prices are higher than selling prices. Gas distributors have to absorb the burden themselves,” said Li, although we are confident that unless Beijing intervenes yet again, distributors will do everything in their power to make sure others foot the soaring bill.

  Meanwhile, as reported previously, some factories in gas-reliant sectors such as ceramics and fertilizers have already had supplies restricted in order to conserve fuel for home heating. Those that can get it will pay more – the cost for gas feedstock at ceramics factories in Guangdong and Jiangxi have nearly doubled, according to industry publication Ceramic Information.

  The gas surge is coming just as a jump in coal prices is relaxing. Action by China’s authorities to boost output has helped ease a crunch on supply that’s contributed to power shortages and crimped output in some key industries.

  

  Thermal coal futures on the Zhengzhou Commodity Exchange fell 2.8% to close at 891.8 yuan ($139.3) on Tuesday, paring an earlier drop of as much as 8.4% that brought the price to the lowest since August.

  Alas, as the LNG example shows, unless Beijing successfully manages to plug all hole where the “mole” can emerge, this strategy merely exacerbates an already unprecedented crisis, and the longer the state intervenes in price discovery the worse the final outcome.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 21:25

• The Supreme Showdown: Bruen Has This Makings Of A Major Second Amendment Victory
  The Supreme Showdown: Bruen Has This Makings Of A Major Second Amendment Victory

  Authored by Jonathan Turley,

  On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will take up arguably the oldest and most controversial right in our history.

  

  New York State Rifle Association v. Bruen is the first major gun rights case in over ten years to come before the Supreme Court and it has the makings of a major gun rights victory in the making.

  The case concerns concealed-carry restrictions under N.Y. Penal Law § 400.00(2)(f) that require a showing of “proper cause.” Lower courts have upheld the New York law, but there are ample constitutional concerns over its vague standard, such as showing that you are “of good moral character.” New York wants to exercise discretion in deciding who needs to carry guns in public while gun owners believe that the law flips the constitutional presumption in favor of such a right.

  There are few constitutional rights that have been debated so long in this country as gun rights. Indeed, before other Englishmen were given a written guarantee of the right to bear arms, colonists in Virginia in 1607 were given such a written guarantee by the Crown.  Since that time, the right to bear arms has been an engrained part of our culture and ultimately our Constitution.

  Despite that history, the meaning of the right has remained the subject of heated debate. That is evident from the fact that it was not until 2008 that the Supreme Court finally recognized the right to bear arms as an individual right in District of Columbia v. Heller. Two years after Heller, in McDonald v. City of Chicago, the court ruled that this right applied against the states.

  This is actually the second time in two years that the New York State Rifle Association has come knocking on the door of the Supreme Court. The Association previously challenged a New York law that imposed stringent conditions on the ability of gun owners to even transport their guns outside of their homes. The law was viewed by some of us as unconstitutional under existing case law, but New York politicians insisted that it would be defended all the way up to the Supreme Court.  However, when the Court called their bluff and accepted the case, those politicians quickly changed the law and pulled the case before the Court could rule.

  The bait-and-switch incensed members of the Court who delayed in the dismissal of the case.  Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas specifically called out New York for “manipulating” the docket by withdrawing an unconstitutional law just before a final opinion. Justice Brett Kavanaugh joined in the condemnation and added menacingly that “some federal and state courts may not be properly applying Heller and McDonald. The Court should address that issue soon, perhaps in one of the several Second Amendment cases with petitions for certiorari now pending before the Court.”

  They ultimately did precisely that and took another case by the very same plaintiffs: the New York State Rifle Association.

  The current court membership is arguably the strongest Second Amendment bench in decades. That includes Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who wrote a strong defense of the Second Amendment defense as an appellate judge.  While it is always dangerous to predict outcomes before the Court, this case was accepted with a likely intent to reverse the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (which also upheld the earlier restrictive law).

  With lower courts chipping away at its prior precedent, the Court seems poised to push back with a case that brings greater clarity and support for the right to bear guns in public. Many Second Amendment advocates are encouraging the Court to pull back on language from Heller that has been cited mantra-like by lower courts limiting the scope of this right. Many point to the court’s statement in Heller, which acknowledged that “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It then listed possible “sensitive places” for denying permits to former felons.

  The Court is likely to continue to recognize reasonable limitations, including possibly some location-based limits. However, it may create a clear presumption in favor of law-bidding citizens to bear arms outside of the home. The natural default under the Second Amendment in favor of gun owners is likely to be strengthened.

  The showdown with New York and the Second Circuit in that sense was merely delayed, but not forgotten by the Court. Ironically, the earlier law would have presented a narrower platform for reconsidering the Second Amendment. By gaming the system a year ago, New York may have delivered a far greater opportunity for Second Amendment advocates in the case.

  Of course, the Court could have accepted the case to simply amplify its agreement with the Second Circuit, but I would not count on it. It is like the scene in Braveheart when William Wallace said that he was going to “pick a fight” with the British when others were looking for a compromise. That came as little surprise to his main lieutenant Hamish who shrugged and added “Well, we didn’t get dressed up for nothing.”

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 21:05

• VA Governor Race Called For Republican Youngkin
  VA Governor Race Called For Republican Youngkin

  With over 70% of the votes counted, Decision Desk has called the race for Republican newcomer Glenn Youngkin who holds a 9 pts lead over Democratic Terry McAuliffe.

  

  Additionally @Redistrict has called the race for Youngkin…

  I’ve seen enough: Glenn Youngkin (R) defeats Terry McAuliffe (D) in the Virginia governor’s race. #VAGOV

  — Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Matt Walsh is pretty clear on who’s to blame (to thank) for this Republican victory (notably McAuliffe won Loudon 55-44, but @Redistrict forecast that he would need a 14pts lead to support a state-wide win)…

  I want to thank the Loudoun County school board. None of this would have been possible without you. Tonight’s result was your handiwork. Congratulations!

  — Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And Donald Trump, Jr has some thoughts for President Biden…

  When Biden wakes up tomorrow afternoon, somebody’s gonna have to tell him he’s now officially presiding over the collapse of the Democrat party

  — Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  MSNBC is taking it well…

  MSNBC is taking it well pic.twitter.com/is7yAd4L2M

  — Benny (@bennyjohnson) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  *  *  *

  Update (2030ET): In a somewhat stunning – yet completely predictable – turn of events, Fairfax County – the largest and most prosperous in the state – has reportedly missed its self-imposed deadline to count early ballots.

  Terry McAuliffe’s campaign says Fairfax County will not meet their self-imposed deadline of 8pm to count early votes. A portion of the early votes in Fairfax County need to be rescanned and there is no set timeline for that yet.

  His staff says that could delay the results.

  Breaking: Fairfax County, Virginia has announced that they are *RE-SCANNING* ballots and will be releasing their vote totals later tonight.

  — Kyle Becker (@kylenabecker) November 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The problem was reportedly with a thumb drive of the early ballots…

  Fairfax County is rescanning roughly 20,000 ballots from early voting sites after there was a technical issue with a thumb drive the votes are stored on, according to a Fairfax County official.
  Official says there is a paper trail of votes cast and are working on it now@wusa9

  — Kolbie Satterfield (@KolbieReports) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  This is not good for ‘faith in democracy’…

  Regardless of cause, delayed results from Fairfax County – the pivotal county in the commonwealth of Virginia – is REALLY BAD for public trust.

  — Ian Haworth (@ighaworth) November 3, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  *  *  *

  Update (2000ET): Voter turnout is reportedly very strong, on track to break 3 million votes, exceeding the 2017 record:

   

  Based on local turnout reports, VA is on track to break 3 million votes, which would surpass gubernatorial record of 2.6M set in 2017.

  Not clear which side that benefits, but this isn’t a scenario in which turnout in blue areas is falling through the floor. #VAGOV

  — Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) November 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Notably, Virginia tends to punish the president’s party. In the last 12 Virginia gubernatorial elections, the president’s party has won only once.

  Obviously, a Youngkin win would be a boost for Republican prospects to take control of both chambers of Congress. 

  *  *  *

  Today is the last day for Virginians to vote in what has become an unexpectedly close race for governor between former Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and newcomer Republican candidate, Glenn Youngkin – who has gained considerable ground in recent days.

  

  Political watchers across the country are keeping tabs on this year’s race as a proxy for the political mood, as the outcome may offer insight into what might be ahead for both parties in the 2022 midterm elections.

  From the beginning, Democrats expected McAuliffe to coast into the Governor’s mansion in a state which saw Biden beat Trump by 10 points in the last election – yet Youngkin has gained massive ground after focusing on parents’ anger over schools – which includes pandemic mandates and critical race theory. McAuliffe, meanwhile, said during a debate with Youngkin “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach,” a decidedly poor move.

  McAuliffe’s campaign has faltered amid anecdotal accounts of an apathetic Democratic voter base. Biden’s standing in the commonwealth is mediocre, with his approval rating in the low 40s in several polls.

  The upshot is that Youngkin appears to have the momentum going into Election Day on Tuesday. The level of enthusiasm at recent campaign events has been tangibly greater for Youngkin, even in the Democratic-leaning Northern Virginia suburbs. -The Hill

  Meanwhile, the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics has shifted its opinion of the race from “leans Democratic” to “leans Republican.”

   “Youngkin has the enthusiasm, the environment, the history, and perhaps even the issues (given his focus on education and its increasing salience in polling). McAuliffe has the state’s Democratic lean in his favor. However, we do feel we owe it to readers to push this race one way or the other and not just move it to a Toss-Up rating at the end. So we’re moving from Leans Democratic to Leans Republican.”

  PredictIt has Youngkin with a significant lead.

  

  The shift comes after McAuliffe spent considerable time pressing his Democratic colleagues on Capitol Hill to pass two major bills in order to show that Democrats are able to capitalize on their slim majority in Congress – yet fighting within the party has resulted in a political quagmire.

  And as the New York Post notes, what’s going on in Virginia may be part of a 30-year political epicycle in which a Democrat wins the White House and then ‘lurches left’ – causing a backlash that reverberates to off-year elections in Virginia and New Jersey.

  In 1993 it was Bill Clinton, who ran for office as a “new kind of Democrat,” promising to “end welfare as we know it” and pledging not to raise taxes on the middle class. Instead Clinton moved left, dumping his welfare reform promise in favor of an unpopular nationalized health care scheme that a Democratic Congress never even put to a vote, raising taxes on the middle class, and promoting the boutique liberal cause of gays in the military (though ultimately settling for the muddle of “don’t ask, don’t tell”).

  Republicans swept the governors’ races in Virginia and New Jersey in 1993 and made large gains in both state legislatures, previewing the GOP landslides in the House and Senate in 1994, when Republicans gained 54 seats in the House for their first House majority in 40 years, and eight seats in the Senate that also gave the GOP a majority. Clinton immediately tacked to the center and remained there for the rest of his presidency.

  The pattern repeated itself in 2009 following Barack Obama’s sharp left turn from the vague platform of “hope and change,” leading to Republicans to once again capture the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey that year.

  A win for Youngkin would be a massive boost to Republicans nationwide – and would add to President Biden’s woes which include failing approval ratings, supply chain issues, inflation, and absolute chaos trying to get his legislative agenda passed.

  As The Hill‘s Niall Stanage notes, “Even a narrow win for Democrats in Virginia would likely not be enough to calm the party’s nerves as it looks towards next year’s midterm elections — and beyond, to the 2024 presidential election where they fear the specter of Trump will be resurrected.”

   

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:45

• Don Lemon Heckled After Being Caught Vacationing Maskless In Florida
  Don Lemon Heckled After Being Caught Vacationing Maskless In Florida

  It’s yet another example of “do as I say, not as I do” when it comes to the hysterical Covid response from those on the left. Today’s reminder comes from CNN’s Don Lemon, who appeared to have been caught on video vacationing in Florida, maskless. 

  This is, of course, the very same Don Lemon who was recently caught pushing the outright lie that podcast host Joe Rogan was using an “unproven de-worming drug” to treat Covid.

  

  In keeping with his excellence in journalistic integrity, Lemon, who has advocated for wearing a mask and routinely railed against the state of Florida on his show, appears to have been caught on video vacationing with a male companion, in Florida, without wearing a mask.

  

  One bystander caught that Lemon was on the premises and got him on video.

  “I wanna thank you. Don Le-moan, right?” the woman filming says to Lemon, while he gets up from his outdoor chair with his companion. 

  “I wanna thank you. Thank you so much. And you’re in the great state of Florida,” the videographer continues, tongue-in-cheek.

  Lemon begins to pack up his belongings and walk away when the woman says sarcastically: “I hope you guys enjoy it. You can enjoy it. Thank you for exposing everything. Cause we love you in Florida.”

  Don Lemon enjoys being maskless in the great free state of Florida pic.twitter.com/pOOj9IbIMI

  — Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) November 1, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  A friend of the videographers’ can be heard chuckling in the background.

  It’s yet one more item to add to the list of liberal hypocrisy in how they want you to handle Covid, versus how they go about it themselves. 

  Lemon did seem like he was in a rush to leave. We wonder if he had dinner reservations that night with Gavin Newsom, or maybe a salon appointment with Nancy Pelosi that he had to get to. 

  

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:45

• Tracking A Journalistic Cliché: "The Worst Attack On Our Democracy Since The Civil War"
  Tracking A Journalistic Cliché: “The Worst Attack On Our Democracy Since The Civil War”

  Authored by Matt Taibbi and Matt Orfalea via TK News,

  On April 28th of this year, Joe Biden gave one of the first big speeches of his presidency, addressing a Joint Session of Congress.

  “I stand here tonight, just one day shy of the 100th day of my administration,” he said.

  “One hundred days since I took the oath of office, lifted my hand off our family Bible, and inherited a nation in crisis.”

  He went on:

  “The worst pandemic in a century. The worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”

  Presidential speeches are more like corporate productions than individual literary efforts. A key aide or team of aides may write the first draft — adviser Mike Donilon is said to have authored this one — and from there, other cooks in the kitchen fight over the ingredients.

  One wants to remove a line, a second tries to add one, and a third will battle over run time or location. According to speechwriter David Frum, George Bush’s famed “Axis of Evil” line was also delivered to a Joint Session, because Karl Rove believed his boss was better before audiences than before “the silent eye of a television camera.”

  No one has said where exactly the line “worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War” came from. None other than Thomas Friedman in the fall of 2020 wrote a pre-election column saying America was in “more danger than it has been since the Civil War,” and it’s possible a political aide spotted the line and liked it. Certainly, however, it didn’t become journalistic cliché until Biden’s April 28th speech.

  News directors and editors once needed stiff nudges to repeat a president’s words verbatim, not just because it’s embarrassing to take dictation from a politician, but because it was bad business to do it for free. If politicians wanted you to buy the “Axis of Evil” or “the end of welfare as we know it,” that’s what paid political advertising was for. In the Trump years, however, it’s become almost a daily practice for commentators to fob off White House-crafted political messaging as their own thoughts.

  I feel bad picking on old friend Chris Hayes, among other things because he did come up with his own, more generalized “since the Civil War” analogy before Biden’s speech. Still, watch in the clip above how he pauses and adds an “arguably, probably” in the middle of a now-almost-verbatim recitation of Biden’s line — “the worst attack on American Democracy, arguably, probably, since the Civil War” — as if he’s coming up with the phrase in the moment, and not repeating exact presidential language from six months before.

  This disease has spread rapidly in the last year or so, when phrases like “transformative president” and “pandemic of the unvaccinated” have begun traveling from White House transcripts to teleprompters facing anchors on CBS, CNN, MSNBC, and Fox with humorous alacrity. In fact, “the worst… since the Civil War” was such a success in flowing from Biden’s head to the lips of people like Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo that, as noted in Matt Orfalea’s terrific compilation above, it’s been deployed for rare double-duty as a political cliché. It’s currently in circulation describing both the January 6th riots and the efforts by Republican state officials to change voting rights laws, and has even become a bit of a crossover hit.

  “Since the Civil War” has had a long enough life-cycle to be captured by the Hate Inc. news-biz dynamic, commoditized for blue and red audiences. As Democrats anxious for hyperbolic interpretations of Republican horribleness gobbled the term up on CNN and MSNBC, Fox viewers have been treated to the same idea in reverse. Laura Ingraham interviewed Newt Gingrich a few weeks ago, and he used the phrase to describe the vaccine mandate, Merrick Garland’s memo on schools and parents, and other forms of ostensible government overreach.

  “Not since the Civil War,” Gingrich said, “have we seen this kind of anti-citizen behavior…”

  Tucker Carlson, meanwhile, counter-riffed Biden by claiming the Immigration Act of 1965 was in fact the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War:

  Tucker: Really? The worst attack on our democracy in a 160 years? How about the immigration act of 1965? pic.twitter.com/ibftJ7ofnE

  — Acyn (@Acyn) April 30, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Of course, “since the Civil War” is absurd in any direction. None of these things were worse “attacks” on American democracy than Pearl Harbor, 9/11, the sinking of the Lusitania, or a dozen other blood-soaked episodes in our history. Also, no matter what your views of Republican voting-rights laws, no rational person would define them as more draconian or extreme than Jim Crow, Japanese internment, or any of the War on Terror initiatives, and that’s just for starters.

  Pundits only just finished telling us a Russian cyber campaign was our new Pearl Harbor (in fact, the chief prosecutor of Robert Mueller’s probe, Andrew Weissman, told us it was worse than Pearl Harbor). The Boston Globe said Charlottesville was literally Fort Sumter. Even Trump’s election win in 2016 was deemed by the BBC to be possibly the “end of liberal democracy.” At least in those cases, though, pundits wrote their own hyperbole. It’s more embarrassing when the White House writes it for you.

  To read the rest of the report, click here and subscribe.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:25

• Biden Slams China's "Not Showing Up" At COP26 As Xi Says He Was Denied Option Of Virtual Address
  Biden Slams China’s “Not Showing Up” At COP26 As Xi Says He Was Denied Option Of Virtual Address

  Recent Western media reports have underscored that China emits more greenhouse gas than all other developed nations combined, so naturally many are asking what’s the point of the ongoing Cop26 UN climate summit in Glasgow if the world’s number one polluter is not present. 

  Over 120 heads of state were present at the first day on Monday – when ‘high level’ opening speeches were given (and President Biden was caught snoozing) – but China’s President Xi Jinping stayed home, and merely submitted a dry written statement published to the conference’s website.

  But on Tuesday China is saying that President Xi was never so much as offered an option of addressing world leaders via live video link. China’s Foreign Ministry told reporters in a press briefing that Xi was never provided the option to attend virtually, apparently after it was sought as a possibility. 

  

  “As I understand it, the conference organizers did not provide the video link method,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said.

  The UK government later confirmed this, with a spokesperson cited in Reuters saying that an intentioned lack of a virtual attendance option was meant to encourage coming in person. The COP26 conference only offered the possibility of a recorded address, such as the Pope gave, or the submission of a written statement. 

  his after Biden himself as well as US officials have taken swipes at both Beijing and Moscow for lack of participation by their top leaders… 

  “Russia and … China basically didn’t show up in terms of any commitments to deal with climate. And there’s a reason why people should be disappointed in that,” Biden said Sunday just ahead of the conference. “I found it disappointing myself.”

  They are laughing at you. The 400 private jets used by world ‘leaders’ to get to #COP26 pumped out 13,000 tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet they want you to stop eating meat, to stop going on holiday, to buy a new electric car, & to spend thousands of pounds on new boilers. pic.twitter.com/Phj1wpQvKJ

  — Matthew Firth (@MatthewPFirth) November 1, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  It appears that instead the UK and UN organizers wish to see an armada of hundreds of fuel-guzzling and gas emitting private jets descending on Glasgow airport. 

  For China’s part, Xi’s written statement urged all developed countries to “provide support to help developing countries do better” while issuing the usual platitudes about jointly tackling the “climate challenge” and speeding up green initiatives – but notably absent were any definitive pledges sought by the West. 

  Meanwhile, after on Monday falling asleep during opening speeches, President Biden took a departing shot at China during his final Tuesday presser before returning to Washington…

  “It’s a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership mantle?” Biden told reporters of Xi’s absence.

  BREAKING: U.S. President Joe Biden just slammed China for “not showing up” at COP26 at his presser before departing the summit.

  “It’s a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to be able to have any leadership mantle?” pic.twitter.com/NSWxmLeQ3J

  — Jack Hazlewood (@JackHHazlewood) November 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 20:05

• "A Monumental Day" – CDC Director Officially Recommends Pfizer Vaccine For 5-11 Year-Old Children
  “A Monumental Day” – CDC Director Officially Recommends Pfizer Vaccine For 5-11 Year-Old Children

  Update (1945ET): Well that escalated quickly… Following the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ 14-0 vote in favor of giving children the shot developed by Pfizer and BioNTech SE, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has officially recommended the vaccine for children from 5 to 11 years old. 

  “Today is a monumental day in the course of this pandemic, and one that many of us have been very eager to see,” Walensky said at the opening of the panel’s all-day meeting.

  “For almost two full years, schools have been fundamentally changed; there have been children in second grade who have never experienced a normal school year.”

  The decision ushers in a new phase in the U.S. pandemic response, widening access to vaccines to some 28 million more people.

  The question is – will kids still have to wear their masks at school?

  *  *  *

  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Tuesday unanimously recommended a two-dose regimen of Pfizer-BionTech’s COVID-19 vaccine for children aged 5-11 years old.

  

  The panel based their recommendation in part on modeling which suggests that vaccinating this agre group will reduce transmission of COVID in the US by 8% between now and March 2022.

  14-0 vote —- not suprising after today’s conversation. CDC ACIP votes to recommend Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine for children 5-11. Expect CDC Director Walensky will make it offical later today or tomorrow.

  — Sarah Karlin-Smith (@SarahKarlin) November 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  For reference, 94 children aged 5-11 have died during the pandemic, out of 1.9 million children who have contracted the disease.

  Committee member Sara Oliver claimed on Tuesday that vaccinating children would also ‘weaken the impact’ of any new variants, but would not block its spread.

  “If we wait, we miss the chance to prevent” Covid-19 infections in children, said Dr. Matthew Daley, who acknowledged that there would be hesitancy among parents.

  “I would just encourage you to talk to your child’s pediatrician … they can just help talk through this with you. But, we’re all here to listen,” he added.

  Each Pfizer shot will contain 1/3 of the adult dose, according to Axios.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 19:52

• Migrant Caravan Rejects Humanitarian Visa, Heads To US And Mexico City
  Migrant Caravan Rejects Humanitarian Visa, Heads To US And Mexico City

  Authored by Tammy Hung via The Epoch Times,

  Leaders of a migrant caravan consisting of thousands of migrants have rejected humanitarian visas for some travelers as they continued the march towards the United States or Mexico city.

  

  The Mexican National Institute of Migration (INM) said that it offered humanitarian visas to pregnant women and children in the caravan but was rejected by leaders of the caravan, which set off from southern Mexico last week, according to Fox News.

  The visas last a year and grant migrants access to public services like healthcare, as well as the ability to work, Reuters reported.

  The caravan of migrants mainly consisted of South Americans, Central Americans, and Haitians. It left the town of Huehuetán in the south of Mexico on Oct. 23.

  Organizers Luis Rey García Villagrán and Irineo Mújica had migrants sign up with QR codes to join the convoy.

  In an interview with Reuters, Mújica said that many caravan members were distrustful of the migration officials due to what he described as broken promises in the past, such as arrests and deportations.

  Garcia told Fox News that the caravan was approximately 4,000 strong with more than 400 children between the ages 7-18, and 100 babies under the age of one. In addition, 65 pregnant women (three being more than eight months pregnant) and four wheelchair bound migrants had joined the caravan.

  Having travelled 60 miles, many caravan members have reportedly developed foot injuries, respiratory problems, and infections.

  Volunteer doctor Kabir Sanchez told Reuters that “more than 50 percent of the people in the caravan are sick.”

  The INM had also reported six cases of dengue amongst members of the caravan, including five children.

  Sanchez also said that caravan members had possible cases of COVID-19 but were not confirmed with tests.

  The Biden administration had blamed root causes in Central and South America as factors causing the recent influx in illegal immigrants.

  Republicans, on the other hand, blamed the border-crisis on the Biden administration’s decision to halt the border wall construction, and to reinstitute the Obama administration’s catch-and-release policy.

  Just last month, The Washington Times reported that catch-and-release numbers increased a whopping 430,000 percent from August 2020 to August 2021 at the US-Mexico border.

  Catch and release allows illegal aliens to be released into the country after being arrested by border patrol agents. Under the conditions of their release, these illegal immigrants are expected to appear for a court hearing at a later date.

  However, the Center for Immigration Studies, which describes itself as “a non-partisan, non-profit research organization,” found that about half of these released illegal immigrants failed to appear to court between 2015 and 2017 (pdf). In 2017, 43 percent did not show up to their court date.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 19:45

• China Junk Bond Yields Hit All Time High As Property Default Contagion Spreads, Home Sales Plunge 32%
  China Junk Bond Yields Hit All Time High As Property Default Contagion Spreads, Home Sales Plunge 32%

  It may seem like ancient history now, with the S&P obliviously plowing ever higher, but just over a month ago stocks briefly panicked over fears that China’s property market, the largest single asset-class in the world according to Goldman…

  

  … was about to implode as a result of a domino effect of Evergrande’s upcoming bankruptcy. And while US equities have clearly moved on since then, the contagion within China’s property sector has spread widely, and in the first two days of November, the selloff in Chinese developers’ debt has deepened with one of the 20 biggest developers joining a host of firms looking to dodge defaults as debt crises effectively shut them out of the overseas financing market.

  Yango Group became the latest developer trying to improve its liquidity and avoid default by delaying near-term bond payments, Bloomberg reported. The Shanghai-based builder, which ranked as the 18th biggest in the nation by contracted sales, is seeking to extend three of its dollar notes as “existing internal resources may be insufficient,” according to a stock exchange filing.

  The company’s warning of a possible default is intensifying investor concerns that developers are caught in a negative credit loop as refinancing risks prompting firms to curb spending and reduce sales. Yango shares fell as much as 9% Monday in Shenzhen, hitting a seven-year low. Several of its onshore bonds plunged to record lows, prompting trading halts. The 5.3% bonds due Jan 2022 , which were trading above 90 just one month ago (during the peak of the Evergrande crisis) closed at an all time low of 22 cents on the dollar.

  

  Not surprisingly, Chinese rating agency Golden Credit Rating cut Yango Group’s credit rating to AA+ from AAA, citing mounting pressure on debt repayment, according to a statement to Shenzhen stock exchange. Yango’s outlook was cut to negative from stable by Golden Credit and Dagong Global Credit: statement. This is after the bonds lost 80% of their value in just over a month.

  The relentless contagion inside China’s property sector pushed the country’s dollar high-yield bonds to fall for a ninth straight day Tuesday after tumbling nearly 9 cents on the dollar in October, closing out the worst two-month slide in a decade. The average yield in the dollar junk bond index touched a record 21.5% on Tuesday, surpassing even the Sept 2011 repo crisis highs.

  

  Yuzhou Group Holdings Co.’s bond due 2025 tumbled 11.6 cents to 38 cents, on pace for its biggest drop in since March, while Sunac China Holdings Ltd.’s note due 2026 fell 5.3 cents to 65.5 cents.

  Amid the carnage, more property firms have been scrambling to avoid missing debt deadlines recently, as the government clampdown on the real estate sector and a liquidity crisis at Evergrande make it tougher for firms to roll over their dollar debt. Other recent examples include Xinyuan Real Estate which last month secured approval on an exchange offer for a bond.

  “We will see more of such offers or even defaults in coming weeks and months,” according to Eddie Chia, portfolio manager at China Life Franklin.

  “Yango is a top developer that had normal operations, albeit slightly more leverage, but clearly it is threatened by a confidence crisis,” he said. “The other developers in the dollar bond market are much smaller than Yango, and most issuers cannot survive if the market is closed.”

  Of course, extending payment deadlines is just a temporary solution; without the underlying cash flow the inevitable default becomes just a question of timing. Still, some investors are betting that granting reprieves now will allow firms to improve their liquidity when the primary market re-opens for China’s riskier borrowers, though it’s unclear when that may happen.Fitch Ratings highlighted that Xinyuan’s default risks remain high, for instance, even after it raised its issuer default rating on the firm to CC from restricted default.

  Unfortunately, it’s not looking good for the core business: in fact it’s looking downright terrible – China’s top 100 developers saw new-home sales fall 32% from a year earlier in October, according to China Real Estate Information Corp. after a similar slump in September.

  More than 80% of the developers saw property sales decline year over year last month, with 44 developers recording drops of more than 30% and 37 developers saw home sales decline on both month-on-month and year-on-year basis, the latest data showed prompting analysts to say it’s almost certain that the housing market will cool further and the outlook for developers’ sales in the fourth quarter is not optimistic.

  Among the 29 major cities monitored by CRIC, residential property sales by floor space fell by 3% in October from a month earlier, sliding 22% from the same period last year and down 12% from the same period in 2019. In particular, home sales in the 25 tier-2 and tier-3 cities declined 4% month over month in October and dropped 23% from a year earlier, showed the data.

  Despite the chill, 32 developers managed to achieve sales of more than 100 billion yuan in the first ten months of the year, six more than the same period last year, and 148 developers’ revenue for the 10-month period exceeded 10 billion yuan, according to data from China Index Academy, one of the largest independent real estate research firms in China.

  As Yuan Talk notes, Country Garden ranked the top with 676.1 billion yuan home sales in the first ten months of the year, followed by Vanke, Sunac and Poly, according to China Index Academy. The top four developers’ total home sales during the period reached 2.17 trillion yuan.

  The top 32 developers’ home sales growing by an average of 10.6 per cent year over year, while the average growth for 23 developers with 50 – 100 billion yuan sales in January – October was at 17.5 per cent, 28 developers with 30 – 50 billion sales at 21.3 per cent and 34 developers with sales at 20 – 30 billion yuan at 24.3 per cent and developers with sales at 10 – 20 billion yuan at 21.3 per cent, according to data from China Index Academy.

  Separate data from China Index Academy showed that property developers’ bond issuance reached 13 billion yuan in October, only about 40 per cent of the 32.8 billion yuan in September. Their offshore bond issuance fell significantly to only 8.427 billion yuan.

  If local companies are locked out of the bond market their defaults are virtually assured: with cash from operations collapsing, if they are unable to roll over upcoming maturities into new debt, a default tsunami is virtually assured.

  Meanwhile, amid rising scrutiny over China’s weakest players, not all firms will be able to secure bond extensions. Modern Land China failed to repay either the principal or interest on a $250 million bond late last month after it earlier terminated a proposal to extend the bond’s maturity by three months.

  The lack of government assistance means much more pain is in store: after at least four builders defaulted last month, limited access to refinancing channels has threatened a wave of delinquencies: some of China’s worst-performing dollar junk bond borrowers have some $2 billion in onshore and offshore bond payments due November. And as investors focus on who files next, here are the developers with payments due this week:

  • Scenery Journey Ltd. $41.9 million coupon on note due 2022: Nov. 6
  • Scenery Journey $40.6 million coupon on note due 2023: Nov. 6
  • Zhenro Properties Group Ltd. $13.7 million coupon on note due 2023: Nov. 6
  • Central China Real Estate Ltd. $7.79 million coupon on note due 2023: Nov. 7

  Amid a growing panic that not a single developer will be able to meat their obligations, some firms are loudly telegraphing their ability to meet debt obligations writes Bloomberg’s Sofia Horta e Costa. On Monday, Zhenro Properties Group said it informed a bond trustee it will redeem its 5.95% dollar notes early in full on Nov. 16. Central China Real Estate on Tuesday said it has remitted funds to a trustee for payment of its 6.75% dollar bonds, which are due Nov. 8.

  And while creditors of these companies can breathe a sigh of relief that their next coupon payments are incoming, we doubt they will hang around for the next one with the situation across China’s property sector as dire as it was during the depths of the global financial crisis and getting worse with every month.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 19:25

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• How Emissions In Asia Are Changing (Spoiler Alert: They're Rising!)
  How Emissions In Asia Are Changing (Spoiler Alert: They’re Rising!)

  At the COP26 conference in Glasgow, world leaders are discussing climate goals and how to potentially limit global warming to 1.5°-2° Celsius. The event is seen by many as the last chance to reach this Paris Agreement goal. However, as Statista’s Katharina Buchholz notes, high-level cancellations by Chinese President Xi Jinping or Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have cast doubts on whether the conference can succeed. Asia, with its many rapidly developing economies, plays a major part in the outcome, with China especially having a pivotal role.

  Data from the Climate Action Tracker shows that while China is responsible for some of the highest climate gas emissions in Asia and the world, the policies and actions already put in place in the country show the biggest potential for emissions reductions until 2030.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  China has recently slightly updated its Paris Agreement targets and additionally pledged to achieve net zero emissions by 2060. The Climate Action Tracker is expecting China to about meet its 2030 goals with the updated policy. While the initiative rates the goal as a fair contribution by China, the country’s effort was still associated with an increase of the global temperature by up to 3° Celsius.

  Elsewhere in Asia, for example in major developing economies India and Indonesia, emissions are lower overall than in China, but they are expected to keep rising – if slowly – until 2030.

  In Russia, which is also a large polluter in the region, they are expected to stagnate, while they have been falling in Japan.

  In the case of India and Indonesia, analysts from the Climate Action Tracker conclude that 2030 Paris Agreement goals set by the countries are actually much less stringent than what the countries are expected to achieve through the policies and action already in place, leaving an accountability gap.

  Both countries have not tightened their Paris Agreement targets yet, but are expected to reach results associated with a 2° Celsius warming (India) and a 3° Celsius warming (Indonesia).

  The situation in Japan is the opposite. While emissions are falling, the ambitious target that would limit warming to 2° Celsius at most will not be met. Instead, the projected emissions also represent the equivalent of a warming of around 3° Celsius.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 02:45

• Will Hungary And Poland Be The Next Victims Of US/EU Regime Change?
  Will Hungary And Poland Be The Next Victims Of US/EU Regime Change?

  Authored by José Niño via The Mises Institute,

  No country is safe from the Eye of Sauron that is the modern-day American national security state. Even some of the US’s ostensible allies can’t escape its all-seeing eye.

  

  Hungary and Poland, both members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), have faced significant criticism from the chattering classes of DC and Brussels in recent years.

  While on the campaign trail, President Joe Biden compared countries such as Hungary and Poland to “totalitarian regimes.” Moreover, former president Barack Obama declared that both countries are “essentially authoritarian” despite being “functioning democracies” not too long ago.

  Similarly, Mark Rutte the prime minister of the Netherlands, has gone as far as to call for the expulsion of Hungary from the EU for its recent passage of a law that would criminalize the promotion or portrayal of sex reassignment or homosexuality to Hungarians younger than the age of eighteen in media content.

  As for Poland, several of its municipalities and regions have passed largely symbolic “LGBT-free” resolutions in opposition to several of the excesses of the cultural Left. Like Hungary, Poland’s traditionalist moves have ruffled feathers in the West. They even drew a harsh rebuke from the Trump-appointed US ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, who boldly proclaimed Poland was “on the wrong side of history” in 2020.

  Beyond cultural matters, Poland is in a long-standing tiff with the European Commission over its judicial affairs. Poland’s ruling Law and Justice Party (PiS) insists Poland has exclusive authority over judicial questions, while Brussels maintains that EU laws trump the laws of member countries. The European Commission doubled down by calling on the EU’s main court to fine Poland for daring to not follow Brussel’s managerial script.

  It’s amusing how politicians, journalists, and NGO mouthpieces from the world’s premier superpower and the Continent’s supranational political union would launch a two-minute hate campaign against countries within their alliance structures. After all, we’re supposed to be living in the “end of history,” when liberal democracy is supposed to resoundingly triumph against illiberalism. However, social engineers in the West cannot appreciate true diversity when it comes to the way countries handle their own affairs. Some countries will not bend to the universalistic whims of outsiders.

  As members of the Visegrad Group—a contrarian bloc of countries within the EU made up of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia—Hungary and Poland have differentiated themselves from their Atlanticist peers in how they have not bought into some of the obsessions with multiculturalism, mass migration, and alternative lifestyle habits most Western democracies vigorously promote both in the state and corporate sectors. Similarly, Hungarian and Polish leaders’ constant reminders to their constituents that they belong to a broader Western Christian civilization further enrages the lifeless technocrats in Brussels, who worship at the altar of managerialism.

  To be sure, the legislation the two Visegrad Group members have passed is perhaps controversial to the interventionists who want to turn every political jurisdiction into a facsimile of Brussels and Washington. As controversial as the two Visegrad Group countries’ moves may be, it’s hyperbolic to suggest that Poland and Hungary are sliding into some form of twentieth-century totalitarianism. Both countries count on parliamentary systems to elect leaders and pass legislation. Contrast that to the EU—a political behemoth filled with tons of unelected bureaucrats who constantly impose regulations and arbitrary edicts on otherwise sovereign nations.

  If anything, so-called liberal Europe should be explaining itself for its hate speech laws and other regulations that impede people’s freedom of expression, not to mention the wrong-headed green energy policies that prevent EU member nations from having access to cheap and reliable energy sources.

  In terms of political economy, Hungary and Poland are interesting cases. While they’re no free market luminaries, they’re ranked fifty-fifth (Hungary) and forty-first (Poland), according to the Heritage Foundation’s Index for Economic Freedom, which means they haven’t completely gone off the market path and still nominally protect property rights. These countries do shine in a handful of instances. For example, Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán has repeatedly stood up against tax harmonization efforts—a euphemism for corporate tax hikes. Hungary’s corporate tax rate hovers around 9 percent, a tax burden that is one of the lowest on the European Continent. On the energy front, Hungary and Poland aren’t sipping on the green energy Kool-Aid. Both the Hungarian and Polish political leadership have had choice words for the EU’s energy policies, further showcasing their dissenting streaks.

  Despite all the evidence showing that Hungary and Poland are not totalitarian countries by any stretch of the imagination, there’s reason to believe liberal internationalists in the West will continue harassing them. Hungary is a particularly easy target due to an assortment of reasons that go beyond its domestic politics. Hungary’s clever use of geopolitical balancing and courting countries like Russia and China will definitely not make it any friends in Brussels and Washington, DC. Hungary has been open to working economically with both countries, which have had increasingly deteriorating relations with the West. With regard to China, Hungary previously blocked an EU statement when China decided to crack down on Hong Kong, much to the consternation of the EU and the international NGO-industrial complex.

  Reasonable people, even outsiders, can have disagreements with foreign governments’ actions. But calling for wholesale regime change—be it through subversion or outright interventionism—is simply delusional. The resulting destabilization just creates additional problems and other unforeseen consequences that foreign policy tinkerers could never anticipate. But here’s the thing: when talking about foreign policy, we’re dealing with people who have long taken leave of their senses. Truth be told, there’s not much rational thinking going on in those spaces.

  It would be inaccurate to view the US as a world power that exclusively uses brute force. Just as it operates domestically, the US state can turn to a combination of vigorous hard power and clever soft power to make wayward actors submit. The infamous “color revolutions”—movements that intelligence agencies, NGOs, and assorted domestic actors use to interfere in foreign elections with the purpose of generating an electoral crisis—are one of many tools the US deep state and its EU allies could use to harass wayward states and compel them to submit to their will.

  Covertly mixing it up with Hungary and Poland would serve as solid tune-up fights for an empire that has faced recent reversals abroad in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq. The irony here is that the US would be subverting two countries that are in its alliance network. As long as liberal internationalist zealots slither across the halls of Congress, one can only expect continued regime change efforts. All corners of the globe are fair game at this point.

  A sea change in the way foreign policy decision-makers view the world is a prerequisite for any correction to take place in the way America conducts foreign affairs. If the status quo persists, the interventionist cabal in DC will always find ways to harass and destabilize nations abroad.

  Tyler Durden
  Tue, 11/02/2021 – 02:00

• RBA Abandons Yield Target Due To 'Economic Improvement'
  RBA Abandons Yield Target Due To ‘Economic Improvement’

  In what many have called the most important event of the week (presumably until Powell unveils the taper), tonight’s Reserve Bank of Australia policy decision – having sat on their hands as short-dated Aussie yields exploded higher in the last two weeks – is likely to ease or further inflict a lot more pain on traders one way or another. As the chart shows, the last time RBA defended its 0.10% yield target was 10/22; since then, things have gone just a little bit turbo.

  

  Interestingly, among the carnage in credit land, Aussie dollar has been an almost totally disinterested spectator over the past week…

  

  As Deutsche Bank’s Jim Reid pointed out earlier, he has “absolutely zero idea what they are going to do tomorrow which should help you all tremendously but their absence again this morning gives a decent indication. I was taught economics in an era where central banks liked to keep an element of mystery and surprise. As such I’ve always disliked the forward guidance era as it encourages markets to pile on to much riskier, one way positions that a normally functioning market should naturally allow. But to go from forward guidance to silence (that rhymes) is a recipe for huge market turmoil if the facts change.”

  So who will be right (FX or bonds) and what will RBA do?

  The global backdrop for today’s meeting is one in which the “transitory” view of inflation is losing ground. If the RBA drops its policy of yield curve control, that will inevitably fuel the narrative of global central bank tightening.

  The decision is – and RBA has decided to discontinue the target of 10 basis points for the April 2024 Australian Government bond:

  The decision to discontinue the yield target reflects the improvement in the economy and the earlier-than-expected progress towards the inflation target. Given that other market interest rates have moved in response to the increased likelihood of higher inflation and lower unemployment, the effectiveness of the yield target in holding down the general structure of interest rates in Australia has diminished.

  And while this shift is economically-confident and hawkish, RBA tweaked the language around rate-hikes:

  This will require the labour market to be tight enough to generate wages growth that is materially higher than it is currently. This is likely to take some time. The Board is prepared to be patient, with the central forecast being for underlying inflation to be no higher than 2½ per cent at the end of 2023 and for only a gradual increase in wages growth.

  The Board will not increase the cash rate until actual inflation is sustainably within the 2 to 3 per cent target range.

  The reaction is interesting as the Aussie dollar weakened…

  

  And bonds were modestly bid…

  

  Finally, it is worth reminding traders that RBA will continue to purchase government securities at the rate of $4 billion a week until at least mid February 2022.

  *  *  *

  Full RBA Statement below:

  At its meeting today, the Board decided to:

  • maintain the cash rate target at 10 basis points and the interest rate on Exchange Settlement balances at zero per cent
  • continue to purchase government securities at the rate of $4 billion a week until at least mid February 2022
  • discontinue the target of 10 basis points for the April 2024 Australian Government bond.

  The Australian economy is recovering after the interruption caused by the Delta outbreak. As vaccination rates increase even further and restrictions are eased, the economy is expected to bounce back relatively quickly. The central forecast is for GDP growth of 3 per cent over 2021 and 5½ per cent and 2½ per cent over the following two years. One important source of uncertainty continues to be the possibility of a further setback on the health front.

  The Delta outbreak caused hours worked in Australia to fall sharply, but a bounce-back is now underway. The Bank’s business liaison and the data on job ads suggest that many firms are now hiring, which will boost employment over coming months. The central forecast is for the unemployment rate to trend lower over the next couple of years, reaching 4¼ per cent at the end of 2022 and 4 per cent at the end of 2023.

  Inflation has picked up, but in underlying terms is still low, at 2.1 per cent. The headline CPI inflation rate is 3 per cent and is being affected by higher petrol prices, higher prices for newly constructed homes and the disruptions in global supply chains. A further, but only gradual, pick-up in underlying inflation is expected. The central forecast is for underlying inflation of around 2¼ per cent over 2021 and 2022 and 2½ per cent over 2023. Wages growth is expected to pick up gradually as the labour market tightens, with the Wage Price Index forecast to increase by 2½ per cent over 2022 and 3 per cent over 2023. The main uncertainties relate to the persistence of the current disruptions to global supply chains and the behaviour of wages at the lowest unemployment rate in decades.

  Housing prices are continuing to rise in most markets and housing credit growth has picked up due to stronger demand for credit by both owner-occupiers and investors. The Bank welcomes APRA’s recent decision to increase the interest rate serviceability buffer on home loans. It is important that lending standards are maintained at a time of historically low interest rates.

  Financial conditions in Australia remain highly accommodative, with most lending rates at record lows. Bond yields have increased recently and bond market volatility has also risen significantly. The exchange rate has appreciated a little, but remains within the range of the past year.

  The decision to discontinue the yield target reflects the improvement in the economy and the earlier-than-expected progress towards the inflation target. Given that other market interest rates have moved in response to the increased likelihood of higher inflation and lower unemployment, the effectiveness of the yield target in holding down the general structure of interest rates in Australia has diminished.

  The Board is committed to maintaining highly supportive monetary conditions to achieve a return to full employment in Australia and inflation consistent with the target. While inflation has picked up, it remains low in underlying terms. Inflation pressures are also less than they are in many other countries, not least because of the only modest wages growth in Australia.

  The Board will not increase the cash rate until actual inflation is sustainably within the 2 to 3 per cent target range. This will require the labour market to be tight enough to generate wages growth that is materially higher than it is currently. This is likely to take some time. The Board is prepared to be patient, with the central forecast being for underlying inflation to be no higher than 2½ per cent at the end of 2023 and for only a gradual increase in wages growth.

  The Governor will conduct a webinar, including a question and answer session, at 4.00 pm AEDT today. This will be broadcast live on rba.gov.au.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 23:40

• Huxley's New World, Part 2: The War On Science
  Huxley’s New World, Part 2: The War On Science

  Authored by Cynthia Chung via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  Huxley makes it crystal clear that he considers the world to be overpopulated, and that science and progress cannot be free to advance without limits.

  

  In Part 1 the question was discussed what was Aldous’ real intention in writing the Brave New World; was it meant as an exhortation, an inevitable prophecy or as an Open Conspiracy? An Open Conspiracy closely linked to not only H.G. Wells, who clearly laid out such a vision in his book by the same title, published in 1928, but a vision also in the vein of Aldous’ famous grandfather Thomas Huxley “Darwin’s bulldog” and mentor to Wells.

  It is from here that we will continue to discuss what exactly were Aldous’ views on such matters, did he in fact believe in the need for a scientific dictatorship? A scientific caste system? Was he actually warning the people that such a dystopia would occur if we did not correct our course or was it all part of a mass psychological conditioning for what was regarded as inevitable, and that Aldous’ role was rather to “soften the transition” as much as possible towards a “dictatorship without tears”?

  The War on Science

  “ ‘A New Theory of Biology’ was the title of the paper which Mustapha Mond had just finished reading. He sat for some time, meditatively frowning, then picked up his pen and wrote across the title-page: ‘The author’s mathematical treatment of the conception of purpose is novel and highly ingenious, but heretical and, so far as the present social order is concerned, dangerous and potentially subversive. Not to be published.’ … A pity, he thought, as he signed his name. It was a masterly piece of work. But once you began admitting explanations in terms of purpose – well, you didn’t know what the result might be. It was the sort of idea that might easily decondition the more unsettled minds among the higher castes – make them lose their faith in happiness as the Sovereign Good and take to believing, instead, that the goal was somewhere beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere, that the purpose of life was not the maintenance of well-being [as happiness and comfort], but some intensification and refining of consciousness, some enlargement of knowledge. Which was, the Controller reflected, quite possibly true. But not, in the present circumstance, admissible.”

  – Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World”

  This is the credo for all scientific dictatorships, to forbid any search for knowledge whose purpose is the discovery of a universal truth, something that “is beyond, somewhere outside the present human sphere.” Something that is and will remain always true, and not just true so long as people are led to believe it is so.

  Thus, a scientific dictatorship must deny purpose by all means and promote an artificial “cushy” conception of happiness and comfort, since the former makes for very bad servants/slaves and the latter for very good ones.

  Purpose leads to unpredictability in the status quo, there are no sureties for an oligarchic system of governance in a world that is motivated by a purpose towards truth, beauty, and knowledge, as Mustapha Mond succinctly lays out.

  It is also the case that whenever one discovers a universal truth, it unifies rather than divides, truth is thus the very enemy of tyranny, for it offers clarity. And one can no longer be ruled over when they can see a superior alternative to their oppression.

  Therefore, under the rule of tyranny, truth must when possible be snuffed out, otherwise it is contorted until it is no longer recognizable, it is broken into fragments of itself in order to create factions, schools of opposing thought that are meant to confuse and lead its followers further astray.

  To deny purpose is thus the necessary condition to rule within a scientific dictatorship. Whether its controllers believe in purpose or not is irrelevant, since it is simply not admissible.

  The question thus is, where does Aldous fit into all of this? For starters let us take a look at Aldous’ family roots to see if indeed the apple did not fall too far from the tree…

  Aldous’ grandfather T.H. Huxley (1825-1895) had made a name for himself by the age of twenty-five and was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1950. Within a span of just a few years he would rise to become a leading member of Britain’s scientific establishment.

  By the late 1700s, discoveries in geology began to contradict the accepted religious view of Creation. It was increasingly found that steady changes were the primary cause of most geological formations which developed over very long spans of time and that these changes had even led to the extinction of certain organisms/creatures. This was the first time that the biblical view of Creation was ever challenged as a mainstream argument within the sciences.

  By the first part of the 1800s the scientific community was primarily in agreement that living processes and their environments did indeed “evolve.”

  In the 1820s Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) and Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), once friends, had come into severe disagreement over the origins of anatomical forms which lead to a historic debate in 1830, raising issues that have yet to be resolved to this day.

  In 1838, upon reading Thomas Malthus’ “An Essay on the Principle of Population,” (who is known for calling for the courting of the plague to address the crisis of overpopulation), Darwin formulated his theory for “evolution” based on the “natural selection” of the fittest, he coined the term as an analogy of what he termed the “artificial selection” of selective breeding, with reference in particular to the practice of horse breeding. Darwin saw a similarity between farmers picking the best stock in selective breeding, and a Malthusian “Nature” selecting from chance variants.

  That is, Darwin’s ideas of “natural selection” and “survival of the fittest” implied no directionality to evolution but rather was based upon Nature’s selection of random variants. But how does one part of an organism evolve without affecting the other parts of said organism?

  According to Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, there is an inherent “potential” in evolution; the potential for change is inherent within the organism, and the shaping of its many parts occurs in a harmonic, coherent way. That is, change moves in a purposeful manner, not a random manner.

  The evolution of wings for flight, the eyes for sight, the nervous system for thought; Geoffroy was stating that these were not the result of countless minute mutations occurring and being selected upon separate from the other, but that the transformations were occurring with the very intention to create forms of flight, sight and thought.

  By Darwin rejecting this thesis, he created a paradox within his own theory. Either the potential for change is inherent in the organism in which many parts are able to change in a harmonic/coherent way, or it is not. However, if it is the latter, as Darwin claims it to be, random change of any part by itself without acknowledgement of the whole would more often than not lead to the death of the organism, as seen in studies of embryo formation, or would create a Dr. Moreau’s Island of freaks (which by the bye is another novel by our anti-hero H.G. Wells).

  The elegant creations we actually do see arise through evolutionary processes would be an extreme rarity in such a world of randomness.

  With everything we know today of the incredibly intricate details of biochemistry, the coordination of metabolic processes which occur in their thousands of “parts” would all need to evolve as randomly separate processes and yet, would also need to occur simultaneously and in conjunction with the other functioning parts. This would make Darwin’s concept for the selection of random variants within a coordinated functioning whole fundamentally impossible.

  Not only is the evolution of the eye one of the miracles of evolution, it has countless variations upon itself, such that there is no one standard model for what is an “eye.” Are we thus to believe that this has randomly occurred not only once but thousands of times in each species with its own distinct variation of what is an “eye”?

  In the early 1850s, Huxley had been introduced to Darwin and by the middle of the 1850s they were in close collaboration. Though Huxley never fully took to Darwin’s theory, he did become an avid defender and promoter of it nonetheless.

  At the time there was strong opposition to Darwin and Huxley within Europe and the United States. James Dwight Dana (1813-1895), a contemporary of T.H. Huxley, was among the American leadership that opposed this view, and argued that evolution did progress with a directionality, using examples such as the observation that biological organisms were proceeding towards greater “cephalization.” That is, that evolution was forming a general trend towards increasingly sophisticated nervous systems that could respond and interact with their environment. Thus, evolution was towards greater forms of complexity with more sophisticated forms of function.

  However, Thomas Huxley, “Darwin’s bulldog” was vehemently against this view of purposeful directionality in Nature. It did not matter that Darwin’s theory was just that, a theory, which still failed to explain much that was being observed in the evolutionary process.

  Although it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss this in further detail (for more refer here), one cannot deny two major changes that occurred in “modern science” as a result of T.H. Huxley’s avid promotion of Darwin’s theory of evolution, that 1) Nature, and thus one could say the Universe, was not governed by purpose but rather by randomness, and that 2) man was but a beast, no longer to be among the children of God, no longer regarded as partaking in anything that was divine or sacred.

  And if man is but a beast what does he care for higher truths? What more does a beast need than the simple forms of comfort and happiness?

  Modern Science begets Modern Religion begets a Modern Utopia?

  Before we go on to speak about Aldous’ brother Julian Huxley, I will say just a few words on his father Leonard.

  Leonard Huxley published in 1926 his “Progress and the Unfit,” which was subsequently used to promote the Eugenics movement, to which H.G. Wells and Leonard’s son Julian were outspoken avid supporters of. Leonard also wrote favourably of his father T.H. Huxley’s views and that of Charles Darwin.

  In his book, Leonard discusses how modern-day science is only to look at the interdependence of body and mind, that the existence of the soul has been discredited by modern science, and thus that conditions for improvement on the human condition must solely rely upon the social and biological.

  He goes on to state that modern society has too long tolerated the proliferation of the feeble minded and so creates an ever-lasting burden for itself. He claims that mental defectiveness (which ranged from criminal behaviour, insanity, physical deformities and forms of mental retardation to addictions such as alcoholism and gambling, homelessness, owing massive debt etc. etc.) were all to be considered heritable qualities.

  Thus, those in possession of such unwanted qualities should be segregated from society or sterilised. He acknowledges that such measures may appear immoral, but that it is only immoral when coercion is used against persons of “normal intelligence,” for those who are deemed abnormal, unable to use reason, such standards of morality do not apply. This also appertained to what were considered to be the “lower” races, to which, T.H. Huxley was outspoken in his view that the “white race” was indeed the most superior race of all and that the “black race” was amongst the most inferior.

  With “modern science,” what stood in the way of the “mechanics of enforced good breeding” if humankind were to be regarded as no different from other beasts? And if we were judged to have no soul, the application of so-called “morality” was up for interpretation if not deemed entirely irrelevant.

  Julian Huxley (1887-1975), the older brother of Aldous, after serving in WWI became a Fellow at New College Oxford, serving as Senior Demonstrator in the University Department of Zoology. In 1925 he moved to King’s College London to work as Professor of Zoology. However, after only two years he resigned his chair to work full-time for H.G. Wells and his son G.P. Wells on “The Science of Life.”

  For those who are not too familiar with the views of H.G. Wells, I think it apt to share a quote, from part of his “new Bible” trilogy, “Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought” published in 1901:

  “It has become apparent that whole masses of human population are, as a whole, inferior in their claim upon the future, to other masses, that they cannot be given opportunities or trusted with power as the superior peoples are trusted, that their characteristic weaknesses are contagious and detrimental to the civilizing fabric, and that their range of incapacity tempts and demoralizes the strong. To give them equality is to sink to their level, to protect and cherish them is to be swamped in their fecundity. “

  I assure you, there is plenty more where that came from.

  “The Science of Life,” which was also a part of Wells’ “new Bible” trilogy, was to give a popular account of all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. It is credited in introducing modern ecological concepts and emphasised the importance of behaviourism and Jungian psychology.

  At the very end of the 900 page volume, it is written:

  “To have a world encumbered for a time with an excess of sterile jazz dancers and joy riders may be a pleasanter way to elimination than hardship and death. Pleasure may achieve what force and sword have failed to do. The world can afford it; it is not a thing to fret about. It is only a passing fashion on a grand scale this phase of sterilized “enjoyment.” The great thing is that it should be able and willing to sterilize itself…The types that have a care for their posterity and the outlook of the race will naturally be the types which will possess the future.”

  This, believe it or not, is H.G. Wells at his best behaviour, amply toned down so to speak. To Wells this is a rather humane proposition, since those who are considered of defective biological stock are simply to be sterilised but are otherwise free to mingle within society, free to live out a comfortable life of pleasures in all their degeneracies with no threat that such contaminants will continue on in the future breeds of humankind.

  Thus, the age of pleasure will be more effective than the age of the sword (such as WWI), at diminishing the lower castes into a more “manageable” number. Within a generation, the human stock will be purified and a “Modern Utopia,” another book of H.G. Wells, can finally begin. Earth will become a paradise full of plenty, largely made up of a higher caste of reasonable, intelligent, healthy and attractive individuals and we will finally obtain world peace and harmony, until perhaps the next purge….

  Besides Julian Huxley acting as Vice-President from 1937-1944 and President from 1959-1962 of the British Eugenics Society, he was also the first director-general of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 1946, to which he wrote its mandate “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy” that same year.

  In it Julian lays out the need for a world government as the only means for avoiding war, and that the full sovereignty of separate nation states should be transferred over to this world government accordingly, under one political unity to which he expands upon, writing:

  “At the moment, it is probable that the indirect effect of civilization is dysgenic instead of eugenic, and in any case it seems likely that the dead weight of genetic stupidity, physical weakness, mental instability and disease proneness, which already exist in the human species will prove too great a burden for real progress to be achieved. Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that is now unthinkable may at least become thinkable.” (For more on this refer here.)

  In 1928, H.G. Wells publishes his “The Open Conspiracy: Blue Prints for a World Revolution,” where he calls for the reform of religion into a “modern religion,” which was only fitting now that science had become a “modern science.” In his concept of modern religion, he states that it will be necessary to strip religion down to its raw elements of service and subordination. Wells also wrote “The New World Order” in 1940, and no doubt, was a guiding influence on Julian’s outlook when he wrote the manifesto for UNESCO.

  The reader should also know that T.H. Huxley was the mentor of H.G. Wells and introduced him to the writings of Thomas Malthus and Charles Darwin.

  [Refer to Part 1 of this series for an in-depth discussion on how H.G. Wells influenced the works of Aldous Huxley.]

  The 20th Century Descent of Man

  At the very start of the 20th century, the influential International Congress of Mathematicians organised a conference in Paris, France 1900. It was at this conference that David Hilbert, a leading mathematician at Göttingen University was invited to speak on the future of mathematics, where he stressed the need for the field of mathematics to “prove that all axioms of arithmetic are consistent” and to “axiomatize those physical sciences in which mathematics plays an important role.”

  What Hilbert was calling for in his challenge for the future of mathematics was that all scientific knowledge be reduceable to the form of mathematical “logic” so to speak; that it be contained within a minimum of accepted truths and rules of derivation, which could be proven by consistent and complete formal mathematical proofs.

  Thus, all scientific knowledge would in the future be deduced from such mathematical models, there was nothing left to “discover” in the typical sense of what defined scientific investigations during the 19th century and earlier, they only need refer to the appropriate mathematical model.

  In 1900, Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead set out to meet Hilbert’s challenge which resulted in the “Principia Mathematica,” published thirteen years later.

  Although Kurt Gödel would disprove the entire premise for the “Principia Mathematica” with his “incompleteness theorems” which show the limits of provability in formal axiomatic theories, the “Principia Mathematica” is one of the most influential works of the 20th century, on not only shaping modern logic but also formed the basis for the latter development of cybernetics and systems analysis by Russell’s student Norbert Wiener during WWII.

  Before you conclude that Russell himself didn’t personally believe that irrationality was a fundamental force in the Universe simply because he tried formalizing said Universe, it is worth reading a section of his bitterly misanthropic view of humanity presented in his 1903 “A Free Man’s Worship”:

  “That man is the product of causes that had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and his beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve individual life beyond the grave; that all the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of Man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins- all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand… Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built.”

  Whether deterministic or random in view, the goal was the same, to promote a concept of the Universe that had no governing purpose, no directionality and no morality, that it was essentially a mechanism, discoverable by a few simple laws. This was not something new, the Enlightenment had already done much to emphasize individualism, skepticism and “science” reduced to the confines of empiricism and agnosticism.

  With such a view our connection to the Universe becomes inconsequential, with the Universe seen as something cold, unknowable and ultimately dead or dying. Such a concept only further enforces that there is no real meaning to anything, there is no purpose, at least, it is not a purpose that we have any place in.

  During the First World War, Aldous Huxley spent much time at the Garsington Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, a lover of Bertrand Russell, who believed (as Aldous and Julian would also), in the concept of open marriage. Although T.H. Huxley knew Russell’s parents, Lord and Lady Amberley, it was at the Garsington Manor that Aldous first met Bertrand Russell and the Bloomsbury Group.

  It is also where he met his first wife Maria Nys, a wartime Belgian refugee who had been invited to stay with Lady Ottoline Morrell. Maria, who was bisexual, had entered into a several year love affair with Lady Ottoline starting at the age of sixteen. Maria did finally accept Aldous’ proposal and they were married in 1919 keeping an open marriage.

  The Bloomsbury Group or Set, which met regularly at Lady Ottoline’s was an association of English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists which reflected in large part the influence of G.E Moore (who wrote the “Principia Ethica” in 1903) and Bertrand Russell who were amongst the founders of analytic philosophy. Alfred North Whitehead was also a member of the group.

  As Dorothy Parker, American poet and writer, described them in a famous quote of hers, “they lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles”.

  Aldous Huxley would maintain a loose association with the Bloomsbury Group. It appears Aldous had a similar approach to Russell as he did with Wells, although he seems to have a serious dislike for both men, he nonetheless was greatly influenced by their works. In 1932, Russell exclaims in a letter to his publisher that the “Brave New World” was “merely an expansion of the two penultimate chapters of his ‘The Scientific Outlook,’ “ adding that “the parallelism applies in great detail, e.g., the prohibition of Shakespeare and the intoxicant producing no headache.” Russell went so far as to contemplate charging Aldous with plagiarism, to which his publisher dissuaded him from pursuing.

  In Russell’s “The Scientific Outlook” published in 1930 he describes a caste system with the need for two separate modes of education, one for the elite ruling class and the other for the slave class. The ruling class is to be concerned with improving the scientific technique, while “the manual workers [are to be] contented by means of continual new amusements.”

  Aldous echoes this sentiment in his “Brave New World Revisited,” where he writes:

  “The older dictators fell because they could never supply their subjects with enough bread, enough circuses, enough miracles and mysteries.”

  Although it is said that Aldous wrote the “Brave New World” as a satire of the works of H.G. Wells, and what appears to be the works of Russell as well, as already shown in Part 1 this is not true. Aldous is incorporating the ideas of Wells and Russell into his works, and though he may find these men dislikeable, he nonetheless never actually contradicts their views in any of his writings or lectures. The entire premise for his “Brave New World Revisited,” published in 1958, instead reinforces those very views.

  Aldous makes it crystal clear that he considers the world to be overpopulated, that this is a crisis that must be checked, and that science and progress cannot be free to advance without limits. He restresses these very themes again in his last novel “The Island” as well.

  In “Brave New World Revisited” he writes:

  “The annual increase of numbers should be reduced. But how? We are given two choices – famine or pestilence and war on the one hand, birth control on the other…how can those who ought to take the pill, but don’t want to, be persuaded to change their minds?…In reducing the birth rate of those industrially backward societies where such a reduction is most urgently needed?…Or consider the backward societies that are now trying to industrialise. If they succeed, who is to prevent them, in their desperate efforts to catch up and keep up, from squandering the planet’s irreplaceable resources as stupidly and wantonly as was done, and is still being done, by their forerunners in the race?”

  Here we need only replace the word “pill” with “sterilisation” and not much has changed.

  In fact, as published in The Guardian, “Huxley was in favour of genetic breeding programmes to arrest the multiplication of the unfit. In a particularly unsavoury article, published in 1930 in the Evening Standard, he confessed anxiety about the proliferation of mental defectives and called for their compulsory sterilisation.”

  Brave New World was written one year later in 1931.

  It looks like the apple did not fall too far from the tree after all…

  [Part 3 will discuss Aldous’ role in shaping the Esalen Institute, the Vedanta Society, his relationship to William Sargant and the CIA’s MKUltra, and how Aldous’ form of ideological spirituality went on to shape the drug-counter-culture movement.]

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 23:40

• Next-Gen Stealth Drone Spotted Over Area 51 Airspace
  Next-Gen Stealth Drone Spotted Over Area 51 Airspace

  The latest photo of what appears to be the Northrop Grumman RQ-180 stealth flying-wing surveillance aircraft was posted on Oct. 31 by Dreamlandresort.com website, according to The War Zone. 

  Joerg Arnu, who maintains Dreamlandresort.com, described how he and a friend captured an image of the RQ-180 over Area 51 restricted airspace: 

  “A friend who wishes to remain anonymous and I were at the Groom Lake Road gate yesterday. I heard a faint aircraft noise and noticed a contrail straight above us, inside the Area 51 restricted airspace, heading roughly SSW. Through my IS [image stabalized] binoculars, I first thought I was looking at a B-2 until I realized it had a POINTED tail. The B-2 has a serrated tail. My friend took the enclosed photo (two enhanced versions superimposed). It is clearly a twin-engine aircraft.”

  Arnu said they were using a Canon 20Mpix camera and captured the drone flying at around 70,000 ft. He believes the aircraft was headed to Edwards Air Force Base in California. 

  

  Another sighting of the RQ-180, or another aircraft that was based on platform, was sighted over the Philippines in September. 

  

  Exactly one year ago, another RQ-180 was spotted near Edwards AFB. 

  

  The repeated sightings of the RQ-180 suggest that the stealth drone is in limited operational service, or at least in some form of real-world testing. Simultaneously, we suspect Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider stealth bomber to be in the final assembly, with a debut expected in early 2022. 

  Is American air supremacy to be reignited? 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 23:20

• The Challenging Art Of Pro-Liberty Persuasion
  The Challenging Art Of Pro-Liberty Persuasion

  Authored by Sheldon Richman via The Libertarian Institute,

  Anyone who hopes for a peaceful pro-liberty intellectual revolution is interested in the art of persuasion. But is it a practical art? Can enough people be persuaded to abandon long-held anti-liberty views for something quite different?

  I’m assuming here that one wishes to persuade people of positions that one really thinks to be right and true. Demagogues may try to sell propositions they don’t actually hold, but let’s leave them out of the story. Of course, even wrong and bad people can believe what they say and seek to persuade others of those views. But I’m thinking only of the good-faith efforts of people of intellectual integrity to persuade others to their side.

  

  That persuading people of the truth can be difficult is captured by popular cliches. For example, someone said, “It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.” That’s often attributed to Mark Twain, but Snopes says the evidence is lacking. (This sort of thing is so often the case.) Snopes says that Twain did write in his autobiography, “How easy it is to make people believe a lie, and how hard it is to undo that work again!” That’s pretty close.

  Then there’s this one (and its variations): “A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.” That’s also commonly attributed to Twain, but we are told we have reason to doubt it. Jonathan Swift, Thomas Francklin, and others, however, referred to the respective speeds of truth and falsehood. (I guess Abraham Lincoln was right when he said you can’t believe everything you read on the internet.) Another saying goes something like this: “It isn’t what we don’t know that hurts us. It’s what we know that isn’t so.” Nope, again not Twain, as far as we know, but he and others came close. It’s been attributed to probably a dozen authors.

  My point isn’t about who did or didn’t say these things, of course; it’s that observers have long understood that dissuading people from erroneous beliefs is no easy task. (I’ve tried long enough.) It can be like swimming upstream, which is understandable as well as frustrating.

  Many thinkers have written about the various biases we all have and other impediments to clear thinking, such as the common logical fallacies. (Steven Pinker’s Rationality would be the latest book in this genre. Bryan Caplan’s The Myth of the Rational Voter also gets into this regarding people’s solid biases regarding international trade and immigration.) It seems to me that a big reason for the difficulty in getting others to understand one’s contrary position, much less embrace it, is the simple preference for the familiar that so many hold. Whether this has something to do with our descent from people who lived in and trusted only small and somewhat isolated groups, I do not know. But I’m not sure that an evolutionary explanation is necessary. The appeal of the familiar — the safe — seems obvious enough.

  As we grow we develop a worldview, and it becomes the default position. It’s what we know (or “know”). It’s home. Asking that we abandon it for something else is a big deal. It’s such a big deal that it’s not merely a matter of examining the evidence. One would have to be convinced that examining the evidence is worthwhile. That in itself is a big barrier to surmount. I think many people commonly assume that if a newly encountered idea were true, they would have heard about it before. They haven’t heard it; therefore something must be wrong with it. The inclination to doubt the new can readily find subjectively satisfying supporting grounds: the advocate of the news must have cherry-picked the data or left out conflicting theoretical considerations, and so on. Confirmation and other biases can be powerful if one is not vigilant. Nothing is easier than restoring one’s inner equilibrium.

  Another barrier to persuading people to embrace freedom fully is that many propositions are counterintuitive; they require thought based on at least some knowledge of a special discipline. Libertarians spend a lot of time trying to teach people that a society unguided by a central authority can be peaceful, orderly, and efficient. Unfortunately, that’s not obvious. We grow up learning to plan our day, our lives. We see other people doing it. So how could society as a whole work smoothly and well without a central plan and planner?

  It’s not easy to explain this to people who’s never encountered the idea of spontaneous order. Asking them to trust individual freedom and the market can seem like asking them to have blind faith in something alien. This is true about many economic propositions and other esoteric subjects that require training in a particular way of thinking. Fear of the strange is a powerful inducement to stick to what you “know.”

  On the other hand, some people are eager for the unfamiliar and go out of their way to seek it out. Who can say why in a given case? Maybe they are simply rebelling. Or maybe they’ve spotted intellectual and empirical problems with their original worldview that other people overlook. If you were raised in a communist society and believed what you were indoctrinated to believe, you might eventually notice that the society is no worker’s paradise, with all the regimentation and deprivation. That could lead you to reject your inherited worldview. But not everyone does this. What’s clear to A may be far from clear to B, even siblings who grew up in the same environment. Human beings are interesting.

  Those of us who are trying to persuade people to embrace the nonaggression obligation–that is, classical liberalism, or libertarianism, may have an advantage though. Most people already believe that they shouldn’t rob, hit, or kill, or otherwise aggress against others. So those of us who are merely asking that this already widely accepted principle be applied across the board — even to people calling themselves the government — may have an easier job than we thought.

  On the other hand, freedom can be scary for some people. It obviously requires self-responsibility, which requires effort and brings the possibility of failure. Not everyone relishes that. In Monthy Python’s Life of Brian, the condemned hero tells a Roman centurion that he doesn’t have to follow orders to kill him — to which the centurion responds, “I like orders.”

  Who can say which inclination will be stronger in enough people? The best we can do is start with the familiar; be clear; and be honest. That’s our only hope.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 23:00

• Bank Of America Sees Oil Hitting $120 By June; Could Rise Much Higher
  Bank Of America Sees Oil Hitting $120 By June; Could Rise Much Higher

  Brent oil will hit $120 per barrel by the end of June 2022, Bank of America’s commodity analyst Francisco Blanch said in a research note from Oct 29. The catalyst for BofA’s increased price forecast is the same one that has prompted every other bank to turn bullish on commodities  – the current global energy crisis that has seen prices for crude oil, coal, natural gas, and LNG skyrocket as the market tightens, which in turn is causing rampant gas-to-oil substitution; an increase in air travel only adds to the bullish picture.

  Just a month ago, BofA forecast that oil could reach $100 over the next six months, and that was only if we had a “very cold winter.” At the time, this was expected to be the most important driver of the global energy markets.  Fast forward one month and BofA feels even more confident now that the global oil demand recovery will continue to outpace supply over the next year and a half, resulting in dwindling inventories that set the stage for higher oil prices.

  Looking at the recent turmoil in the energy sector, BofA writes that while oil has been playing catch-up to other fuels, petroleum markets have been mostly led by bunker fuel and naphtha since January 2020 (Exhibit 4) as factories, petrochemicals, and trade surged, while refinery run cuts limited supply. With COVID-19 having a disproportionate impact on mobility, the biggest price laggards in the energy space have been gasoline, jet fuel and diesel, otherwise the usual summer and winter season leaders. Yet things have started to change in recent months, with gasoline and distillate demand firming up (Exhibit 5) ahead of winter

  

  This is how Blanch justifies what would be the highest oil price since the summer of 2008:

  We up our oil price forecasts and targets for 2022, 2023…

  Oil prices have recently risen above $80/bbl, led by gas-to-oil substitution and an increase in air travel. Where will we go next? Pent-up demand for oil was the main reason we laid out a $100 target for Brent in 2022 back in June. Yet we now believe that the run-up in global gas and coal prices has turbocharged the Brent and WTI price recovery. As we look into 2022 and 2023, we still expect oil to move from a steep deficit that has seen global inventories draw at a rate of 1.2mn b/d in the past 6 months to a more balanced market. Still, structural oil demand and supply rigidities are emerging, and we now forecast Brent and WTI crude oil prices will average $85/bbl and $75 and $82 and $70 in 2022 and 2023, respectively, compared to $75 and $65 (for Brent) and $71 and $61 (for WTI) prior.

  

  …as we see gasoline, diesel demand leading prices higher

  Forward oil balances do not appear exceptionally tight and non-OPEC+ supply growth should be able to keep up with demand over the next 2 years. Yet, spare OPEC+ capacity is dwindling due to underinvestment. Also we estimate the price elasticity of US shale supply has dropped by more than half. Plus oil demand growth should stay robust thanks to easy policies, as oil prices remain below the point where demand destruction could kick in. And even if the potential return of Iranian barrels helps keep a lid on prices in 2022, a combination of rapidly growing gasoline demand and an ongoing recovery in middle distillates, coupled with refinery constraints, could squeeze oil prices higher in 2022. For this reason, we also raise our end-1H22 Brent oil price target to $120/bbl.

  

  Looking ahead, Blanch warns that oil prices are at risk of entering a demand rationing phase, as the expectation of peak oil demand this decade due to climate change pressures has kept long-dated oil prices depressed relative to the forward for now. Yet, if the COP26 conference that started today fails to deliver a clear “aggressive” or “Net zero” decarbonization path, the world will likely need more oil than currently available on a forward basis to meet demand growth in the 2020s.

  Furthermore, even if we see a relatively balanced oil market in 2022 and 2023, there is very little crude oil in inventory across the OECD to deal with a sustained demand surge into 2025-2030. Thus, should policy center mostly on supply and not address demand simultaneously, a playbook similar to the one just observed in global gas markets may emerge for oil. Read: hyperoilflation.

  Needless to say, any future collision of demand and supply rigidities in oil prices à-la-gas could be much more detrimental to the world economy. For now, inflationary pressures are feeding rising local currency prices for diesel and other fuels. Since early 2020, many EM central banks have hiked interest rates, but developed markets are nowhere close to tightening monetary policy in a significant way. At a micro level, rising energy costs are also driving light-medium oil differentials wider.

  Fast forward to BofA’s ominous conclusion, Blanch writes that should COP26 fail to reassure the market that energy demand is on a clear decarbonization path over the next decade, oil could join gas in the final episode of the energy squeeze game, even as a China slowdown, supply chain issues, and an SPR (Strategic Petroleum Reserve) release are near-term downside risks for oil.

  * * *

  While we will have to wait 7 months to find if BofA’s stagflationary forecast is accurate, OPEC+ production will be reevaluated on Thursday this week, although it is widely expected that the group will stick to its plan to add back in another 400,000 barrels per day. The issue with this plan for added production is that OPEC+ has failed to add back the barrels under its plan so far.

  Other traders and banks feel oil is heading for $100, with Goldman Sachs estimating that oil demand is nearing 100 million bpd (a pre-Covid figure) leading to a $90 Brent price by year end, and demand is only set to strengthen as the winter heating season approaches and on calls for increasing jet fuel demand early next year.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 22:40

• China's "Satellite Crusher": Space Pearl Harbor Is Coming
  China’s “Satellite Crusher”: Space Pearl Harbor Is Coming

  By Gordon Chang of Gatestone Institute

  • The satellite, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., is “tasked with demonstrating technologies to alleviate and neutralize space debris.”

  • As Beijing sees it, American satellites constitute “debris.”

  • “[Communist China’s satellite] is a real-world offensive capability that can hunt and destroy American systems and render the U.S. military on earth deaf, dumb, and blind.” — Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, to Gatestone.

  • At one time, America was dominant in space, and American political leaders decided to go slow on developing anti-satellite weapons for fear of triggering a competition.

  • All that American restraint did was to allow the Chinese and Russian militaries to grab commanding leads in the race to deploy these impossible-to-defend-against delivery systems for nuclear weapons.

  • Unfortunately, “the Department of Defense is still unbelievably bureaucratic and slow.”

  • The Pentagon’s bureaucracy “is just brutal.” — Outgoing Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General John Hyten, CNN, October 28, 2021.

  • Fortunately, there is also Elon Musk, a bureaucracy of one.

  On October 24, China launched its Shijian-21 into orbit. The satellite, according to China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp., is “tasked with demonstrating technologies to alleviate and neutralize space debris.”

  As Beijing sees it, American satellites constitute “debris.”

  

  Shijian-21 has a robotic arm that can be used to move space junk—there are more than 100 million pieces of it floating around the earth—or capture, disable, destroy, or otherwise render unusable other nations’ satellites. That arm makes Shijian-21 a “satellite crusher.”

  Brandon Weichert, author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, tells Gatestone that the Chinese satellite was launched into geosynchronous orbit, where many of America’s most sensitive satellite systems—those critical to Nuclear Command, Communications, and Control (NC3), surveillance, and military communications—are located.

  “Because the U.S. satellites in geosynchronous orbit are so far away from earth, they are both expensive and hard-to-replace,” he notes. “Losing any of these systems, with no replacements on hand, would give China’s military an unprecedented advantage in the event of an outbreak of hostilities.”

  China has designed its new space station, Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center tells me, “to incorporate additional large military modules that can be equipped with lasers, microwave, or missile-based anti-satellite systems.”

  In September 2008, China’s Shenzhou-7 manned mission came within 45 kilometers of the International Space Station as the Chinese crew was launching a microsatellite, “an obvious simulated ISS-intercept mission,” says Fisher. One of the veterans of that mission, Fisher tells Gatestone, is now the commander on board the Chinese space station.

  “They’re going counterspace in a big way,” said Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General John Hyten on October 28 at an event sponsored by the Defense Writers Group. Hyten, previously commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command and U.S. Strategic Command, said Chinese military officers “are doing all those things because they saw how the United States has used space for dominant advantage.”

  “For many years, Washington has taken its space superiority for granted,” Weichert observes. Complacency is not the only American disease, however. American blindness also had a role. At one time, America was dominant in space, and American political leaders decided to go slow on developing anti-satellite weapons for fear of triggering a competition. With the U.S. having the most assets in orbit, the reasoning went, the U.S. would have the most to lose with a race.

  That view was the product of a fundamental misunderstanding of Chinese and Russian attitudes. The misunderstanding also directly led to America falling behind in another crucial space technology. The U.S. was the early leader in hypersonic flight with the X-15 reaching Mach 6.7—6.7 times the speed of sound—in 1967. Now, however, America is about a half-decade behind China. The U.S. is also trailing Russia.

  “We had held back from pursuing military applications for this technology,” Ambassador Robert Wood, U.S. representative to the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, told Yahoo! Wood, as described by that site, “implied that U.S. officials had tried to avoid spurring a scramble for hypersonic missiles.”

  All that American restraint did was to allow the Chinese and Russian militaries to grab commanding leads in the race to deploy these impossible-to-defend-against delivery systems for nuclear weapons. In late July, Beijing shocked the Pentagon with an orbital test of a hypersonic glide vehicle.

  Similarly, America is now behind China in the ability to take down satellites. “The Shijian-21 satellite is a game-changer,” says Weichert, who also produces The Weichert Report. “It is a real-world offensive capability that can hunt and destroy American systems and render the U.S. military on earth deaf, dumb, and blind.”

  Space, of course, is the ultimate strategic high ground, conferring control of the earth. Therefore, American leaders should have known that China would try, as Weichert explains, to build the capabilities “to first knock the Americans out of orbit and then to place their own systems there.”

  The U.S. has the ability to catch up, of course, but big course corrections are necessary. For one thing, American satellites are easy pickings for the Chinese military. As General Hyten put it, “we actually put the president in a tough spot because we have a handful of fat juicy targets, while the adversary has built hundreds of targets that are difficult to get after.”

  The result, the general said, is that America does not have “a resilient space architecture.”

  A resilient architecture, Hyten correctly believes, would be composed of lower-cost surveillance satellites that, in the words of SpaceNews, “can be mass produced and deployed fast.”

  Unfortunately, “the Department of Defense is still unbelievably bureaucratic and slow,” Hyten observed. The Pentagon’s bureaucracy “is just brutal.” So don’t count on the U.S. military, which has taken a decade to design a yet-to-be-launched survivable space network.

  Fortunately, there is also Elon Musk, a bureaucracy of one. His SpaceX is building the Starlink constellation of telecommunications satellites in low-earth orbit. When complete, there will be some 42,000 satellites that can be used by the satellite-dependent U.S. military when China has crushed, lasered, shot down, or bumped out of orbit America’s military assets in space.

  Of course, China will also try to take down the Starlink constellation too.

  Beijing, Weichert tells Gatestone, is planning a “Space Pearl Harbor.”

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 22:20

• Australia Is Now Threatening Citizens With Seizure Of Homes & Bank Accounts Over Covid Violations
  Australia Is Now Threatening Citizens With Seizure Of Homes & Bank Accounts Over Covid Violations

  Multiple reports out of Australia over the past days have confirmed that state and territory governments are threatening to seize the homes and bank accounts of citizens over unpaid ‘COVID violation’ fines. This as much of the country’s population are now living under vaccine mandates linked to employment: take the jab or face termination, many Aussies are being told.

  For example, a new report in Daily Mail has reviewed fresh government data compiled by the Queensland health authority. It found that “Queenslanders who received fines for breaking Covid-19 rules risk having their homes seized and bank accounts frozen in a government crackdown to collect $5.2 million in repayments.”

  

  Over 3,000 cases of unpaid fines have piled up across the large northeast Australian state – but the current number may be much more – given the last available data tracks the overdue fines through the end of September.

  Writing on the potential punitive actions that the State Penalties Enforcement Register (SPER) is now threatening Australian citizens with, the Brisbane Times details: 

  SPER was undertaking “active enforcement” on another 18.4 per cent of fines, worth about $1 million, which a spokesman said “may include garnishing bank accounts or wages, registering charges over property, or suspending driver licenses”.

  The remaining 25.2 per cent of fines were either under investigation or still open to payment without further action being taken.

  So effectively large swathes of Australia are seeing the government now exercising total control over their lives – taking away everything from citizens, who apparently still have no recourse: private citizens’ money, property, and even ability to freely transport their own vehicles are under threat. 

  Essentially the state in Australia can now seize people’s homes for not paying covid fines.

  That escalated quickly.

  — PeterSweden (@PeterSweden7) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Since the start of the pandemic, Australia (as well it’s smaller Pacific neighbor New Zealand) has been at the global forefront of absolute Covid nuttiness – whether it’s authorities arresting people at public parks for not wearing masks, or police showing up at residence’s doorsteps to question them on their anti-lockdown stances, or also forcing perfectly healthy people into weeks of hotel quarantine at individual expense.

  At that latter note, Brisbane Times says that an even larger number of people may have their credit history destroyed as the state calls in debt collectors for prior expenses stemming from forcible hotel quarantine: 

  Outside SPER’s work, Queensland Health took the unusual step of calling in private debt collectors to chase up $5.7 million amounting from 2045 significantly overdue invoices for hotel quarantine.

  “Queenslanders rightly expect travellers will pay for their hotel quarantine stays and not leave taxpayers to foot the bill,” a Queensland Health spokeswoman said.

  In the Orwellian newspeak of Covid enforcement lunacy, those who are forced by the state to be locked up inside hotel quarantine in mandated total self-isolation for weeks on end are dubbed merely “travelers”.

  Meanwhile, in neighboring New Zealand, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is now comfortable enough to bluntly and openly admit what many of these draconian Covid state crackdown actions are really all about…

  WATCH 🚨 New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern admits that she has created two classes of people in the country, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated.

  pic.twitter.com/QTlkvbtyU2

  — Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) October 24, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 22:00

• Did Ibram X. Kendi Just Give Away The Con?
  Did Ibram X. Kendi Just Give Away The Con?

  Op-Ed Authored by Andrea Widburg via The American Thinker (emphasis ours),

  Ibram X. Kendi (born Ibram Henry Rogers) has made a name for himself as an “anti-racist” activist, which is an Orwellian way of saying that his entire career is based upon arguing that America is a systemically racist country and that all White Americans are complicit. However, in a tweet that he swiftly deleted, Kendi effectively acknowledged that power in America lies with racial minorities, not with Whites. Oh, and he’s a transphobe.

  

  Kendi’s breakout best-seller, How To Be An Antiracist, is on every Critical Race Theory reading list, whether in America’s K-12 schools, its colleges (some of which have made it mandatory), its corporations, or the American military. In 2019, Kendi wrote an essay for The Atlantic claiming, as all race hustlers do, that America’s real founding was 1619, when the British brought slaves to America’s shores:

  Her name was Angela, one of the first known Africans in British North America.

  His name was John, the first known antiblack racist in colonial America.

  In 1619, this black woman and white man—what they embody—arrived months apart in 12-year-old Virginia, the first of the 13 British colonies that became the United States. Angela was the original embodiment of enslavement, of survival, of the 400-year African American struggle to survive, to be free of racism. John was the original embodiment of elite white male power, of the democracy of racists, of its 400-year struggle to survive, to be free of anti-racism.

  And there you have the whole systemic racism theory in full. Of course, even ardent leftists, if honest, concede that this is all an ahistorical lie.

  But we shouldn’t expect more from Kendi, for he’s not the brightest bulb in the box. Watch him struggle to explain what constitutes racism. It’s embarrassing but also really funny:

  In which academic discipline is this circular, naive, deer-caught-in-the-headlights response to a basic and urgent question considered insightful or excellent?

  A national culture exempting this (which, sadly, is typical of him) from judgment is unintentionally racist itself. pic.twitter.com/n493NpjFmx

  — John McWhorter (@JohnHMcWhorter) June 1, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Of course, Kendi could have stood there picking his nose and he would have been feted, because he’s saying what leftists long to hear. Dividing America along racial lines is the perfect way to break this country and lead it into the glorious new morning of socialism.

  Still, the intellectual deficit is Kendi’s Achilles heel. It explains why he tweeted (and then deleted) a message that undercuts everything he’s been hustling – namely that white people are masquerading as minorities in order to gain an advantage on college applications.

  

  Wow! America must be really racist if the only way Whites can get into college is if they pass as minorities. Oh, wait! Never mind….

  That was bad enough but, when people started calling Kendi out on the true import of that now-deleted tweet, he pulled the race card, which is only the only card in his deck:

  

  

  Kendi’s tortured “logic” reminds me of Tweedledee’s and Tweedledum’s logic in Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll’s sequel to Alice in Wonderland:

  “I know what you’re thinking about,” said Tweedledum; “but it isn’t so, nohow.”

  “Contrariwise,” continued Tweedledee, “if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn’t, it ain’t. That’s logic.”

  Yes, indeed, Prof. Kendi. “That’s logic.”

  Kendi may have a bigger problem than just picking fights with people smarter and better informed than he is. It turns out that Kendi doesn’t admire so-called transgender people:

  In a video posted on Twitter Ibram X. Kendi, the man celebrated by the left for his efforts to insert Critical Race Theory in the nation’s schools, said it was “horrifying” when his daughter announced she wanted to be a boy.

  “Even talking about gender, you know, I think it was last week my daughter came home and said she wanted to be a boy,” Kendi said in a video that includes his name on the screen. “You know, which was horrifying for my wife to hear, myself to hear.”

  “And so of course, you know, we’re like, okay, what affirmative messages about girlhood, you know, can we be teaching her to protect her from whatever she’s hearing in our home or even outside of our home that would make her want to be a boy,” he continued.

  I agree with Kendi on this one but he’s going to discover that, when you pick fights with the activist alphabet people, you’re going to lose. Expect Kendi’s groveling apology any day now. After all, he’s got to sell his upcoming book, How to Raise an Anti-Racist. I expect a new chapter about How to be a Transophile.

  Here’s an idea for Xendi: Celebrate the fact that you’re in America, not Africa, and that, by virtue of your skin color, even the fact that you’re incredibly ill-informed and really not very bright hasn’t stopped you from reaching the pinnacle of woke society.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 21:40

• Ags Join Commodity Melt-Up As Wheat, Cotton Soar
  Ags Join Commodity Melt-Up As Wheat, Cotton Soar

  Global food prices continue to move higher with no end in sight. Wheat prices tagged a new multi-year high; cotton, coffee, corn, and soybean oil are also surging as concerns about persistent food inflation mount. 

  

  The Bloomberg Agriculture index is moving higher. 

  

  On Monday, the most-active wheat futures rose more than 3% to $7.97 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade, hitting 8.5-year highs. Prices have gained more than 11% since mid-October. 

  

  European wheat prices are nearing all-time highs. 

  COMMODITY INFLATION: Add European milling wheat to your inflation watch. Front-month European wheat prices (Matif) about to hit an all-time high, currently just a couple of euros below the peak set in 2008 | #OATT pic.twitter.com/HjfWMyE1Y2

  — Javier Blas (@JavierBlas) November 1, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  A combination of factors is driving wheat prices higher. First, global demand is robust, and second, supplies are tightening worldwide. Demand is increasing when supplies are shrinking due to poor weather during harvest in top export countries. That helped catapult prices higher in recent weeks. Then Saudi Arabia booked a monster purchase of the cereal grain. Leading importer Egypt also returned to the market Monday after making a large purchase last week. 

  Pressuring prices higher are farmers faced with a whole host of inflationary woes, from soaring fuel, fertilizer, labor, and machinery costs to adverse weather conditions that may result in fewer plantings in 2022. 

  Then there are adverse weather conditions:

  “The Russian Ministry of Agriculture had said that farmers would drill 19.5 million hectares this autumn, but prolonged dry weather has resulted in delays,” U.K.-based trader Frontier Agriculture said late Friday. “Ukraine is also suffering from low soil moisture, raising concerns for the country’s winter drilling potential.

  Wheat prices may remain elevated in 2022 and pressure food inflation higher. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization recently showed global food prices are fresh decade highs.  

  

  Last week, palm oil, the world’s most consumed vegetable oil, surged to a new record high, which seems like an ominous sign for emerging market economies where soaring food prices will stress households and result in what SocGen’s Albert Edwards has said since December: soaring food prices will destabilize vulnerable countries. And add soaring energy costs to the mix and we suspect Biden’s approval rating may head even lower.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 21:20

• Bitcoin Mining And The Global Semiconductor Shortage Are On A Collision Course
  Bitcoin Mining And The Global Semiconductor Shortage Are On A Collision Course

  Authored by ‘Shinobi’ via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  A shortage of semiconductor production is at the forefront of geopolitics and it’s inevitable that this issue’s relation to Bitcoin mining will be as well.

  

  Supply chain shortages are starting to reveal many geopolitical dependencies on external actors for different resources, and the overall fragility that those dependencies can create for any given nation when supply chains are stressed.

  All it takes is for one little domino to tip and problems cascade through the entire system. It should come as no surprise that nations are starting to view these compounding problems as national security issues and responding accordingly.

  ADDRESSING THE SEMICONDUCTOR SHORTAGE

  For instance, the U.S. Department of Commerce under the Biden Administration has become very involved recently in addressing supply chain issues, specifically in the context of semiconductor shortages. As far back as April and May 2021, it has been meeting with semiconductor companies involved in different points in the supply chain to better understand and address the issues underlying these supply shortages. In the wake of the most recent of these meetings in September, the Commerce Department sent out a request for information to all semiconductor companies across the entire supply chain in order to gain more insight into the specific bottlenecks and flows of the supply chain as a whole.

  It wants to know where companies fit in the supply chain, the node nanometer (nm) size of their chips, the type of chip or products they produce, estimated sales, backstocks of products, etc. It is a very comprehensive request, essentially asking for everything there is to know about companies’ products, sales, stock numbers, and anything related.

  Effectively, what it is trying to do is establish a baseline for a live view into the logistic flow of everything from fabrication to product packaging and delivery.

  This request has been met with serious backlash in both Taiwan and South Korea, highlighting the massive geopolitical importance of chip fabrication capacity in the global economy.

  THE GEOPOLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF CHIP FABRICATION

  The South Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy as well as the Taiwanese Ministry of Economic Affairs have both expressed serious concern over the scope of the information requests. Specifically in Taiwan, where the largest chip fabrication company TSMC is located, politicians have gone so far as to question whether complying with the informational requests could give up information ultimately threatening TSMC’s global dominance in the future.

  In-depth information such as nm size, types of chips being produced or who is purchasing them, could all theoretically be used to position investments in infrastructure to effectively snatch customers away from TSMC and successfully meet all of their needs. For a country like Taiwan, the importance of the semiconductor industry is potentially a major factor in disincentivizing attacks from China. To lose that dominance is possibly of much more importance than just the economic considerations.

  Given that the United States Senate has recently passed the “U.S. Innovation and Competition Act,” which will spend $52 billion dollars on increasing domestic semiconductor fabrication capacity, and the “CHIPs for America Act” being introduced in the Senate to create income tax credit for semiconductor companies, Taiwan’s fears might not be unfounded.

  The U.S. has been working to rebuild its semiconductor industry domestically since the Trump administration, and ironically a TSMC fabrication plant in Arizona negotiated under Trump just began construction this summer. Action in that direction has rapidly accelerated after the supply shortages due to lockdowns, as the modern day computer chips are required for all kinds of things you wouldn’t expect, like kitchen appliances, cars and even lightbulbs.

  BITCOIN AND SEMICONDUCTOR SECURITY

  Semiconductors are the oil of the digital age. Every nation is going to need their own national security plan around semiconductor supply reliability in the way that they have plans around energy reliability. It is a reality that cannot be put off acknowledging any longer.

  So, what does any of this have to do with Bitcoin? ASICs. Mining hardware is useless if you don’t have the energy to power it, but energy to power miners is also useless if you don’t have miners themselves.

  As far as 7-nm-or-under fabrication capacity goes (the cutting edge), the only games in town are Intel, Samsung and TSMC. This leaves these companies with a lot of political weight to throw around in terms of manufacturing cutting-edge ASICs.

  The dynamics of who can and can’t produce semiconductors in general is already coming to the forefront of politics as nations realize the importance of minimizing reliance on foreign actors to maintain such capacity. It is only a matter of time before how these issues relate to Bitcoin mining starts to come to their attention as well.

  What form will that take? Who knows. Maybe it acts as another accelerant for larger nations to expand their domestic fabrication capacity. Maybe nations with capacity ban exports of miners to enemy nations. Maybe nations engage in espionage to acquire intellectual property relating to cutting-edge fabrication techniques.

  Whatever form the realization takes when it happens, it will happen, and the effect on the mining ecosystem will be interesting to say the least.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 21:00

• US B1-B Bomber Flies Over Mideast With Israeli & Saudi Escorts In Warning To Iran
  US B1-B Bomber Flies Over Mideast With Israeli & Saudi Escorts In Warning To Iran

  Over the weekend the US flew a B-1B strategic long-range bomber over the Middle East, and specifically over the Strait of Hormuz near Iran, in what the US Air Force called a “presence patrol” to send a message to Tehran. The Air Force revealed details and photos of the provocative fly-over on Sunday.

  Importantly at various points along the route, which went from the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to Yemen and then through Israel and Jordan and then over the Persian Gulf, US allied fighter jets escorted the bomber – most notably aircraft from Israel and Saudi Arabia.

  

  Politico noted based on the US Air Force statement “Fighter jets from Bahrain, Egypt, Israel and Saudi Arabia flew alongside the bomber” in different intervals and locations.

  The report further recalled that “The Strait of Hormuz has been the scene of attacks on shipping blamed on Iran in recent years, while the Red Sea has seen similar assaults amid an ongoing shadow war between Tehran and Israel”; however, it remains “The Islamic Republic has denied being involved in the attacks, though it has promised to take revenge on Israel for a series of attacks targeting its nuclear program.”

  The flight mission was a rare one given the bomber took off from the remote Diego Garcia outpost, given the B1-B’s present deployment to the island was a recent first in the past 15 years. 

  

  The US Air Force described what was essentially a circumnavigation of the entire Arabian Peninsula as follows:

  The flight was a five-hour, non-stop multilateral mission with participation from air forces to include: Bahrain, Egypt, Israel and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia…. Multiple partner nations’ fighter aircraft accompanied the B-1B Lancer at different points during the flight, which flew over the Gulf of Aden, Bab el-Mandeb Strait, Red Sea, Suez Canal, Arabian Gulf, Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman before departing the region.

  Following the Abraham Accords, which involved the Gulf countries of the UAE and Bahrain signing a historic peace treaty with Israel in 2020, there have been growing calls for Saudi Arabia to also normalize relations with Tel Aviv.

  That Saturday’s US bomber flight involved the participation and cooperation of both the Israeli and Saudi militaries is also somewhat unprecedented, and suggests a deepening and continuing de facto military and intelligence relationship between the two (especially since the war in Syria).

  pic.twitter.com/NFRJDeaG7d

  — Israeli Air Force (@IAFsite) October 30, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Meanwhile the US and Israel have vowed to pursue “other options” should there be no restored nuclear deal to come out of Vienna talks. This new B1-B flight is a clear message to Iran as part of the continuing pressure campaign to get Iran back to the table after talks have stalled since June. 

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 20:40

• The Military's Social Policy Suggests A Lack Of Real-World Threats
  The Military’s Social Policy Suggests A Lack Of Real-World Threats

  Authored by Tate Fegley via The Mises Institute,

  Over the course of this year, conservatives have expressed a number of grievances they have with the US military. Tucker Carlson delivered a monologue questioning Joe Biden’s emphasis on the issuance of flight suits designed for pregnant women.

  (Noteworthy is that Tucker is not against women in combat roles per se, since he states, “If the Pentagon can show that pregnant pilots are the best, we will be the first to demand an entire Air Force of pregnant pilots.” I don’t believe anyone has accused Tucker of thinking carefully about tradeoffs.)

  Other conservatives, however, do express disagreement with filling combat roles with women. A recurring demand in pursuit of egalitarianism is extending mandated registration for the Selective Service to young women, opposition to which is typically due to the prospect of drafting women to fight, rather than the morally correct position of opposing involuntary servitude for anyone.

  A further gripe is the trend of the military’s embrace of wokeness, as evidenced by statements made by General Mark Milley defending the teaching of critical race theory at West Point and the need to “understand white rage,” as well as the approach taken in recent recruitment ads. While Chinese and Russian military recruitment campaigns appeal to a sense of patriotism, one US Army ad features a woman inspired by the activism of her two moms and who feels the need to compete with her sorority sisters in doing something meaningful with her life. How she does this through operating Raytheon and Lockheed Martin’s Patriot Missile Defense Systems is left unexplained.

  One of the latest controversies involving the military is Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate, which leaves service members potentially facing a dishonorable discharge if they refuse to be vaccinated. Hundreds of thousands of US troops have not yet complied with this mandate. While it is unlikely that all of them would continue to refuse if the alternative were a dishonorable discharge, a significant percentage will. Hundreds of Navy SEALs who have refused the vaccine are currently considered undeployable.

  

  Many believe that some or all of these issues hurt troop morale and render the US military a less capable fighting force. This is unambiguously the case when discharging or not deploying personnel who are otherwise qualified and on whom millions of dollars have been spent to train.

  It serves as an illustration of something those of us skeptical of US military adventurism already knew: Americans in the continental US are incredibly geopolitically blessed in terms of being able to live at peace with the rest of the world, if only those with political authority allowed it. We have mostly friendly neighbors to the north and south, no one who poses a threat close by, and thousands of miles of ocean between us and everyone else. And because of this the US military has the luxury of engaging in terrible, wasteful decision-making that undermines effectiveness without much cost in terms of domestic civilian lives lost from foreign aggression (with the exception, of course, of blowback caused by US foreign policy).

  So why would the US military embrace wokeness and other policies if they could possibly come at the slightest cost of effectiveness or morale?

  The military is a bureaucracy (or rather a set of bureaucracies) and the primary institutional goals of bureaucracies are to preserve their own existence and increase their budgets. Fully embracing the cultural concerns of establishment leftism certainly doesn’t hurt in terms of encouraging the mainstream Left to forget their former opposition to Bush’s wars. Congressional Republicans will present no serious opposition to wokeness in the military, certainly not in terms of reducing their budgets. The CIA seems to be employing a similar strategy. Promoting the fact that they hire gay people covers a multitude of sins, such as assassinations, torture, and regime change. Furthermore, vaccine mandates help purge the military of personnel willing to question certain types of orders.

  Indeed, pursuing this strategy seems to come with little downside risk. If it does, in fact, reduce the ability of the military or intelligence agencies to protect Americans (to the extent that that is still considered part of their purpose) and results in civilian deaths, their budgets are far more likely to be increased rather than decreased. Their failure to prevent the deaths of thousands of Americans on 9/11 led to unprecedented increases in their powers and resources. We are now told that their failure to prevent whatever you want to call what happened on January 6 (setting aside their role in facilitating it) justifies further increases in their powers. For them, failure is success.

  Thankfully, the veil is being lifted and those with previously promilitary sensibilities are seeing that the military is not unambiguously their friend. This is a necessary step to achieve the ends of peace and a noninterventionist foreign policy. Questioning the military is increasingly considered within the realm of reasonable discourse for those who consider themselves patriots. Polls have traditionally found that the military enjoys among the highest levels of trust among the general public. This is changing and that’s a good thing.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 20:20

• Biden Shows Urgency Of Climate Crisis By Falling Asleep At COP26; MSNBC Admits "Embarrassing" Moment
  Biden Shows Urgency Of Climate Crisis By Falling Asleep At COP26; MSNBC Admits “Embarrassing” Moment

  So much for climate change being humanity’s “greatest threat” – as President Joe Biden previously warned military service members just months ago. Here’s what he said in June…

  “Y’know when I was over in the tank in the Pentagon, and I was first elected vice president with President Obama, the military sat us down to let us know what the greatest threats facing America were, the greatest physical threats.”

  “This is not a joke. Y’know what the Joint Chiefs told us the greatest threat facing America was?“

  “Global warming,” Biden said.

  Biden appears to fall asleep during COP26 opening speeches pic.twitter.com/az8NZTWanI

  — Zach Purser Brown (@zachjourno) November 1, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Today, Biden was seen dozing off during the opening speeches of the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Glasgow, Scotland – an event widely dubbed in the media as humanity’s “last best chance” to reign in the “out of control” specter of incoming climate “disaster”. So much for that.

  The video showing an apparently unenthused and unimpressed US president trying to initially fight sleep before succumbing completely – after which an aide has to come prompt him awake – has gone viral since being shared by The Washington Post’s Zach Purser Brown.

  The question must be asked: does even the president himself or the administration really believe its own apocalyptic climate alarmist rhetoric? At the very least, the body language says no…. 

  

  It must have been rather warm in the conference assembly room.

  Fox News points out that Biden may have inadvertently “spoke” for the majority:

  Former President Trump has long referred to his political rival as “Sleepy Joe” and Monday’s video presumably won’t help make that nickname go away anytime soon. However, many conservatives joked that Biden nodding off during the climate conference was the most relatable thing he’s done as president.

  The Federalist co-founder Sean Davis responded, “Can you blame him?” 

  MSNBC on Joe Biden falling asleep during climate change conference:

  “These can be embarrassing situations.” pic.twitter.com/KRCKLH2mow

  — The First (@TheFirstonTV) November 1, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Indeed as we previously noted, the notion that anything “meaningful” will actually happen at this summit is almost laughable. The developed nations of the world haven’t even managed to reach their targets from the last major global climate conclave back in 2015, when the Paris Accords were signed.

  Surprisingly, even MSNBC noted the “embarrassing situation”. The network’s correspondent said in a segment covering the moment Biden was caught dozing:

  “Cameras are all around and the camera caught President Biden who turns 79 later this month with his eyes closed for a period of time. These can be embarrassing situations – you have the contrast of leaders including President Biden calling for the urgency of these issues of addressing climate, and a moment like that in an session can be a political obstacle.”

  Biden was not alone in his sleepiness…

  

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 20:00

• Minneapolis Votes On Tuesday To Replace Police With Peace Officers
  Minneapolis Votes On Tuesday To Replace Police With Peace Officers

  Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

  Voters in Minneapolis will decide whether to replace police in city charter with department of public safety workers.

  

  Referendum on Banning Police

  The first election in Minneapolis since the George Floyd killing is a Referendum on Ending the Police Force.

  A ballot initiative would replace the police department in the city charter with a department of public safety that would take a public health approach to safety and include sworn peace officers if deemed necessary. The number of officers in the new department would no longer be set at a required level based on the city’s population. The plan would likely include more money for violence-prevention programs and the diversion of some police calls to social workers and others.

  Despite calls from the city council to reimagine policing after Mr. Floyd’s killing in May 2020, activists say changes haven’t gone far enough. Crime has gone up and the police force has shrunk. Tuesday’s election will be the first time the voters will have a say in the future of Minneapolis since the upheaval began.

  The ballot question has drawn big spending to the municipal election. Yes 4 Minneapolis, the group that wrote the ballot initiative, reported this week that it has raised $1.8 million this year, while All of Mpls, which opposes the initiative, said it has raised nearly $1.6 million.

  In a poll sponsored by the Minneapolis Star Tribune, MPR News, KARE 11 and Frontline in September, 42% of the city’s Black residents supported the charter amendment, compared with 49% of voters overall. And 75% of Black voters wanted more police officers, not fewer, compared with 55% of voters overall.

  Failed City

  If the poll is accurate, the bill will fail. Curiously, more whites than blacks support the measure.

  That close to 50% support this absurd measure is a sure sign Minneapolis is a failed city. 

  Replacing police with “peace officers” whatever the hell that means is just plain nuts. 

  Meanwhile, police have been quitting in droves. In 2019 the Minneapolis police force was 853. Today the police force is 598, a reduction of 30%. 

  Crime, including homicides has soared. But hey. let’s replace police with peace officers. 

  Part of me hopes this passes just to prove how stupid it is. But people’s lives are at stake, so hopefully common sense prevails.

  *  *  *

  Like these reports? If so, please Subscribe to MishTalk Email Alerts.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 19:40

• How Central Banks Unleashed A Devastating 6-Sigma VaR Shock
  How Central Banks Unleashed A Devastating 6-Sigma VaR Shock

  As we discussed over the weekend, in the last week front-end curves have experienced unprecedented volatility and even wilder P&L swings.

  As DB’s FX strategist George Saravelos summarizes in a note “It’s a VaR shock now”, in Australia alone, we have added 75bps of hikes over the next twelve months in just three days. At the same time, the Canadian curve added nearly two upfront hikes following the latest BoC meeting. At the same time back-end government bond yields have moved lower in an unprecedented twist flattening of the curve.

  As Saravelos first discussed back in May, and repeated against more recently last week, “the general flattening of curves is backed up by the very latecycle dynamics of the global economy plus our pessimistic view on global r*.” But what is happening now runs beyond macro and as the DB strategist writes, confirming what we said last week, “it is a plain and simple Value at Risk (VaR) shock driven by positioning and the inability to appropriately calibrate central bank reaction functions in such an uncertain environment.“

  To put things in context: the Aussie bank bill yield rise is the largest 3-day change since 1996 and represents a 6 standard deviation move. In Canada, it is the largest move since 2009 and a 4 standard deviation move.

  

  This, as Saravelos writes, is the closest we can get to a distressed Treasury market and as the next chart shows Europe appears set to join the chaos as rate hike odds represented by 3M Euribor Dec 22s tumbled after last week’s dismal ECB press conference in which Lagarde failed to push back against market expectations for tightening, indicating the market is now also expecting higher rates in the eurozone, a move which suggests that the ECB – which has been adamant there will be no tightening for a long time – is also losing control of the front-end.

  

  Commenting on this ongoing VaR shock, another DB credit strategist, Francis Yared, writes over the weekend that while it may be difficult to interpret from a macro economic perspective, if there was to a be an “original macro sin” for such moves, it would be the excessive reliance of central banks on forward guidance.

  According to Yared, while forward guidance is hailed by central banks as a great monetary policy tool, “when close to the lower bound it suffers significant drawbacks. Indeed, using as an example the ECB situation as summarised in our ECB preview, there are intrinsic limitations to the forward guidance.”  Yared explains:

  • First and foremost and as pointed out by former Fed governor, Jeremy Stein, forward guidance may end up being self defeating: “There is always a temptation for the central bank to speak in a whisper, because anything that gets said reverberates so loudly in markets. But the softer it talks, the more the market leans in to hear better and, thus, the more the whisper gets amplified. So efforts to overly manage the market volatility associated with our communications may ultimately be self-defeating. “
  • Second, to be more “credible” the ECB would need to adopt a calendar based forward guidance (or equivalently as the RBA did a target for e.g. 3-year rates). However, this will imply a degree of certainty that central banks should be wary of pretending to have. It would be the equivalent of doubling up in a difficult position. It could solve the issue in the short term, but will increase the stakes when either (1) time will comes from exiting this reinforced forward guidance or (ii) facts challenge the forward guidance (cf. the RBA).
  • Third, the forward guidance is ultimately based on the ability to forecast inflation. A lot has been written as to why inflation has been low in the past decades. Inflation expectations being adaptive, the conclusions have been extrapolated to the indefinite future. But little credit has been given to the fact that inflation is subject to regime shifts which can be generated by (a) monetary and/or fiscal policy shifts or (b) exogenous supply shocks. In particular, coordinated monetary and fiscal policies is the textbook way of generating inflation. Therefore, in presence of a very pro-active fiscal policy following Covid, introducing a new monetary policy framework predicated on years of low inflation is the theoretical perfect combination to create a challenging environment for forward guidance. Some credit should also be given to the uncertainty generated by the potential negative supply shock associated with addressing climate change.
  • Fourth, in the case of the Fed, the forward guidance is also predicated on the ability to forecast NAIRU. A causal look at historical revisions of estimates of NAIRU highlights the degree of uncertainty associated with it. In fact, as NAIRU is derived ex-post from the combination of the observed level of unemployment and inflation, estimates will turn out to be backward looking and ignoring the regime shifts that could impact inflation. For instance, the US labor market is currently behaving as if was through full employment.

  As Yared concludes, it may very well turn out that following the US mid-term elections a significant fiscal tightening will force inflation back lower. But no matter the outcome, it “should not distract from the fact that an excessive reliance on  forward guidance is not the silver bullet that current central bank rhetoric suggests.” To this, one can only add that if central bank guidance can not be relied upon – i.e., if central bankers are just as clueless as everyone else – then this is actually wildly bullish for risk assets and hyperinflation, as it means that when the inevitable policy error hits and both the economy and markets swoon, these same central bankers will unleash much more of the same “wealth effect” in hopes of undoing their current round of errors, which will do nothing to actually normalize a market that is beyond broken and do everything to push asset hyperinflation to never before seen highs.

  This dynamic will continue indefinitely – as there is nothing preventing the Fed from creating a few more trillion or quadrillion in fiat “money” with the push of a button – and the only possibly constraint for future such catastrophic behavior is when the class inequality finally leads to mass riots and the appearance of the proverbial pitchforks in front the Marriner Eccles building.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 19:20

• The US Is Now Closer To A Dictatorship Than A Democratic Republic
  The US Is Now Closer To A Dictatorship Than A Democratic Republic

  Op-Ed submitted by Elizabeth Vaughn,

  Former President Ronald Reagan once famously said: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”

  

  Notwithstanding the Cold War, Reagan’s words may have been considered somewhat hyperbolic at the time. Today, they are especially appropriate.

  While painting a dresser on Sunday, I listened to a replay of the previous night’s version of Fox News’ “Watters World.” When that video ended, an April 2015 speech from journalist Glenn Greenwald entitled “Edward Snowden and the Secrets of the National Security State” came on and covered with paint, I listened to it.

  Greenwald discussed the National Security Agency’s collection of billions of communications of ordinary, law abiding U.S. citizens. He emphasized the point that, even then, six and a half years ago, America was closer to a totalitarian state than a democracy. Thinking about it, I realized he was right.

  And if Greenwald was right then, how much more do his remarks apply today?

  President Joe Biden has been in office a little over nine months and his administration’s actions have steered the country  on a direct path toward authoritarianism. His regime thinks it’s okay to force Americans into choosing between taking a controversial vaccine or losing their livelihoods, to monitor our bank accounts for all transactions over $600 and to sic the FBI on parents who confront school boards about their childrens’ curricula.

  Needless to say, if the Trump Administration initiated any of those actions, he would have been impeached – again.

  American politics have always been messy. But the corruption that began in the Obama Administration has deepened and accelerated to a dangerous level.

  In 2015, the deep state began an effort to spy on potential 2016 Republican presidential nominees. After it became clear that Donald Trump would win the party’s nomination, Obama Administration officials sent spies into his campaign in an effort to derail his candidacy. The Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC, which she essentially controlled after bailing them out financially, via Marc Elias, then a partner at the Perkins, Coie law firm, hired Fusion GPS to prepare a dossier of damaging stories about Trump.

  Then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama in July 2016 about Clinton’s actions and he did nothing to stop it.

  Using this collection of false stories, the FBI, once a highly-revered U.S. institution, applied to the FISA Court for a warrant (and three renewals) to tap the communications of Trump campaign staffers looking for anything that might destroy his candidacy. They began investigations into Gen. Michael Flynn, junior campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, then-campaign manager Paul Manafort and others and after Trump’s victory, arrested them. And the FBI was aided every step of the way by a complicit media.

  Following an interview with dossier author Christopher Steele’s primary subsource in January 2017, the FBI knew the allegations against President Trump were lies. Yet then-FBI Director James Comey weaponized his agency against him anyway hoping to force him out of office.

  After Trump’s Attorney General Jeff Sessions was convinced by several DOJ insiders to recuse himself from the FBI’s investigation, the ethically challenged Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein appointed Robert Mueller to a Special Counsel. The ensuing investigation cast a shadow of illegitimacy over Trump’s presidency and facilitated a Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterms which led to two bogus impeachments.

  The deep state conducted business as if they were leaders of a third-world dictatorship.

  Next, skirting the state legislatures, Democrats used the pandemic to change the way elections would be conducted, allowing the introduction of mail-in voting on a massive scale. This opened the door to what I continue to believe was a stolen election.

  No one has ever been held accountable for any of this malfeasance. In fact, the DOJ just reinstated the pension of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, who was fired by Jeff Sessions after the DOJ Inspector General found he had lied repeatedly to investigators.

  The dubious Biden victory has brought the U.S. closer than ever before to becoming a totalitarian state. The Biden Administration itself is the most serious national security threat America faces today.

  What can we do about it?

  Virginia and New Jersey voters can send a powerful message to this administration by getting to the polls on Tuesday to cast their ballots for Republican candidates Glenn Youngkin and Jack Ciattarelli. That would be a good start toward the restoration of sanity in the country.

  The rest of us can continue to resist. We can and we must engage in civil disobedience.

  Please follow me on Twitter.

  Please visit my archives: American Free News Network and The Western Journal

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 19:00

• Manchin Destroys Pelosi's Chessboard – Slams "Budget Gimmicks" And "Shell Games" To Force Through Economic Package
  Manchin Destroys Pelosi’s Chessboard – Slams “Budget Gimmicks” And “Shell Games” To Force Through Economic Package

  Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) dispelled any rumors that he’s ‘on board‘ with Democrats’ Build Back Better Act, despite its new $1.75 trillion topline set by the White House (down from $3.5 trillion).

  

  On Monday, Manchin held a seven-minute press conference to set the record straight. The key takeaway is this; nothing is happening on the reconciliation bill until the bipartisan infrastructure bill is passed by the House, and more clarity is provided in general.

  “To be clear, I will not support the reconciliation legislation without knowing how the bill would impact our debt and our economy in our country we won’t know that until we work through the text,” he said, adding “It is time to vote” on bipartisan infrastructure package.”

  In response to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rumored plan to appease progressives by forcing both bills through at once, Manchin insisted that “Hiding this bill hostage is not going to work for getting in support for the reconciliation bill,” adding that he “will not support a bill that is this consequential.”

  “Enough is enough,” he continued. “While I’ve worked hard to find a path to compromise, it’s obvious: compromise is not good enough for a lot of my colleagues in Congress. It’s all or nothing.”

  Watch:

  Last week, Pelosi had planned to hold a vote on just the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill – only to be sidelined by House progressives.

  “Both bills pass together — and when the full legislative text of the popular Build Back Better Act is ready and agreed to, we’ll be thrilled to pass the President’s entire agena [sic],” tweeted Congressional Progressive Caucus leader Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) on Friday.

  Jayapal’s comments followed a “great meeting” with Sen Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), one of two moderate Democrats who have insisted on a slimmed down Build Back Better bill, which started out at $3.5 trillion and now sits at $1.75, per the White House.

  Then, on Sunday, the Washington Times reported a rumor that Pelosi was planning to hold votes on both massive spending packages this week, which would mean both Manchin and the Progressives overcame their longstanding obstacles to moving forward.

  Looks like that’s all out the window now…

   

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 18:44

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• No Coke For Cuba And North Korea
  No Coke For Cuba And North Korea

  Whether you call it Coke, Cola or refer to it by its actual brand name Coca-Cola: Everybody around the world knows the soft drink. Its red-and-white design is ubiquitous and even responsible for Santa Claus’ wardrobe choice. Still, as Statista’s Florian Zandt notes, the beverage isn’t legally available everywhere in the world.

  There are two countries where you won’t find the carbonated drink in stores – at least officially.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Due to ongoing trade embargoes and sanctions, there are currently no legal avenues to buy Coca-Cola in Cuba and North Korea. That isn’t to say that you can’t get your hands on the drink in any other way, just that importing or bottling the beverage is not officially possible in these places.

  Up until 2012, Myanmar was also a country where you couldn’t legally buy a Coke. After the ban was lifted, the soft drink manufacturer invested $200 million to kickstart distribution in the area. Over the last century, the people of Vietnam and China also had to make do without Cola for a couple of years, with the brand’s beverages becoming available again in 1994 and 1979, respectively.

  On its website, Coca-Cola lists 202 markets across four regions where its drinks are sold and marketed. This number, however, has to be approached with caution, since the company doesn’t clarify what constitutes a market and there are currently only 195 UN members, with Taiwan being a potential 196th. The sales of its various beverages in these markets, however they may be defined, generated 75 percent of the company’s $33 billion operating revenue in 2020, with bottling investments and global ventures making up the remaining 25 percent.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 02:45

• Is Climate Alarmism An Establishment Attempt To Restore Social Control?
  Is Climate Alarmism An Establishment Attempt To Restore Social Control?

  Authored by Eric Worrall via WattsUpWithThat.com,

  Over the years, I’ve noticed pretty much every establishment attempt to push a climate agenda is accompanied by a call for people to unite.

  

  What if fear of change, of loss of control, and a desire for social unity and predictability are the real driving force behind the climate push?

  Does the UK need a referendum on climate change pledges?

  Critics say net-zero target has been imposed by ‘elites’ without electoral mandate

  27 OCT 2021

  A large proportion of the British public are in favour of a referendum on the government’s net-zero proposals, according to a new poll by YouGov.

  …

  The Tony Blair Institute’s Tim Lord rejected the idea that “elites” are behind the drive for climate action. He said “there is irony in this – as it is the poorest who will be most severely affected by unconstrained climate change”.

  Lord agreed that the net-zero target was introduced in the summer of 2019 with minimal debate in the Commons and no mention of the plan in the 2017 election – but it was included in the Conservative manifesto ahead of the December 2019 election.

  While delivering net zero is a “complex task” that “cannot be achieved without public support for both the overall goal, and the policies required to get there”, this “cannot mean everyone supports every measure”, he said. Consent must be drawn from a broad base and “net zero has to be based around a politics of unity, not division”.

  …

  Read more: https://www.theweek.co.uk/news/uk-news/954591/does-the-uk-need-a-referendum-on-net-zero-pledges

  Here’s another call for unity;

  Pope Francis praises youth activists in fight to tackle climate change

  “It is said that you are the future, but in these matters, you are the present. You are those who are making the future today, in the present,” the pontiff said.

  …

  The pope said solutions to climate change, including sustainable development and production, must be built on unity and a shared sense of responsibility.

  “There must be harmony between people, men and women, and the environment,” he said. “We are not enemies. We are not indifferent. We are part of this cosmic harmony.”

  …

  Read more: https://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/pope-francis-praises-youth-activists-fight-tackle-climate-change-rcna2401

  China wants unity too;

  China releases white paper on climate change response

  Updated 18:47, 27-Oct-2021

  China on Wednesday released a white paper on the country’s policies and measures for responding to climate change. China has set a goal of peaking carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and achieving carbon neutrality by 2060.

  …

  The white paper states that climate change is a cause shared by all of humanity. Faced with unprecedented challenges in global climate governance, the international community needs to respond with unprecedented ambition and action. We need to act with a sense of responsibility and unity, take proactive measures, and work together to pursue harmony between humanity and nature.

  …

  Read more: https://news.cgtn.com/news/2021-10-27/China-releases-white-paper-on-climate-change-response-14Hs1nziBe8/index.html

  Unity, unity, UNITY. Plenty more examples where they came from.

  When you think about it, a child could see through the nonsensical claims of climate alarmists. If slightly warmer temperatures are so terrible, why aren’t slightly warmer places already suffering all the problems alarmists say will happen? But climate alarmism, as a potential source of social unity, is far too valuable allow it to be defeated by mere logic.

  What has caused this sudden upsurge in fear amongst global elites, that they are losing control?

  I believe the trigger for this panic amongst the global elites was the fall of the Soviet Union. The Soviet State, right up until the very end, seemed all powerful, enormous, an unstoppable juggernaut with its terrifying state security apparatus and apparently complete control of communication.

  But the Soviets failed to adapt to the information revolution.

  …

  “Truth is good,” goes an old Russian proverb that Shane quotes, “but happiness is better.”

  The earliest stirrings of free thought were nurtured on the radio broadcasts of Voice of America and the crude, self-published books and tape recordings of the Samizdatand Magnitizdat movements. By the end, of course, it was CNN and cellular phones that finally defeated the Soviet Union.

  “The exploding arsenal of electronics–cellular telephones, fax machines, VCRs, satellite dishes, computers with modems–demonstrated a trend for technology to become more compact, portable, versatile and inexpensive,” Shane explains. “As such, the new machines seemed to be weapons the citizen could wield against the state as readily as the state could use them on the citizen.”

  As Shane points out, the phrase “information revolution” takes on an entirely new meaning in this context. And he helps us understand how stirring but also how bizarre it must have been for a Soviet citizen to turn on his television set and see the top brass of the KGB on a call-in show: “Tonight they will be answering the questions,” the host announced.

  …

  Read more: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1994-05-11-ls-56160-story.html

  China has survived more successfully than the Soviets, because they had more money. Deng Xiaoping’s capitalist economic reforms in the 1980s gave the CCP the financial resources they needed to buy monitoring equipment and expertise, which made them more able to keep up with the information revolution. But even the Chinese are struggling to contain the free flow of information which is undermining state control of public narratives. Global freedom initiatives have provided systems like the TOR Project, which are used by Chinese citizens who want to sneak past the Great Chinese Firewall, so they can keep track of what is really going on in the world.

  If global elites cannot control communication technology, the next best thing is to try to dominate the conversation, through a fear campaign and a call for global unity. The focus point for that push for global unity didn’t have to be climate change, but I believe they chose climate alarmism because it was convenient and available, and already had a significant following at the time the elites took an interest. Mikhail Gorbachev, after he lost his old job as the last dictator of the Soviet Union, spent a lot of time in the early 90s supporting United Nations climate initiatives.

  The desire by elites to cling on to control, in my opinion, is why climate alarmism has survived repeated embarrassing predictive failures.

  Normally when a scientific theory produces a disastrous series of wrong predictions, the theory withers and dies. But in my opinion global elites are keeping climate alarmism on life support, with vast infusions of taxpayer’s cash for compliant researchers, and en entire renewable energy industry which only exists because the governments of the world keep diverting taxpayer’s cash to pay the bills.

  So long as a significant portion of the population believes in the climate crisis, this powerful source of social unity is too useful for spooked global elites to surrender.

  The elite desire to hold back the information revolution at any price does nothing good for ordinary people.

  Frightening kids with false climate doomsday narratives might buy the elites a little time, by helping the elites to retain their grip on power in the face of the technology driven growth of free speech and open communication, but the kids who accept the climate lies endure tremendous personal suffering.

  Tyler Durden
  Mon, 11/01/2021 – 02:00

• CJ Hopkins: (New Normal) Winter Is Coming
  CJ Hopkins: (New Normal) Winter Is Coming

  Authored by CJ Hopkins via The Consent Factory,

  Winter is coming … and you know what that means…

  

  That’s right, it’s nearly time once again for the global-capitalist ruling classes to whip the New Normal masses into a state of mindless mass hysteria over an imaginary apocalyptic virus. the same imaginary apocalyptic virus that they have whipped the New Normal masses into a state of mass hysteria over throughout the Winter for the last two years.

  They’ve got their work cut out for them this time. Seriously, how much more mass hysterical could the New Normals possibly get at this point?

  The vast majority of the Western world has been transformed into a pseudo-medical dystopia in which you have to show your “health-purity papers” to enter a café and get a cup of coffee. People who refuse to get experimentally “vaccinated” against a virus that causes mild-to-moderate symptoms (or, often, no symptoms whatsoever) in about 95% of the infected, and the overall infection fatality rate of which is approximately 0.1% to 0.5%, are being systematically segregated, stripped of their jobs, denied medical treatment, demonized as “a danger to society,” censored, fined, and otherwise persecuted.

  If you think I’m overstating the case, look at the front page of this Australian newspaper …

  

  Yes, the Great New Normal Purge is on. “The Unvaccinated” and other infidels and heretics are being hunted by fanatical, hate-drunk mobs, dragged before the New Normal Inquisition, and made examples of all over the world.

  Here in New Normal Germany, popular footballer Joshua Kimmich is being publicly drawn and quartered for refusing to submit to being “vaccinated” and profess his faith in the New Normal World Order. In the USA, “the Unvaccinated” stand accused of murdering Colin Powell, an 84-year-old, cancer-ridden war criminal. Australia is planning to imprison people and fine them $90,000 for the “crime” of not wearing a medical-looking mask, or attempted worship at a synagogue, or whatever. In Florida (of all places), fanatical school staff tied a medical-looking mask to the face of a non-verbal Downs-syndrome girl with nylon cord, day after day, for over six weeks, until her father discovered what they were doing. I could go on, but I don’t think I have to. The Internet is brimming with examples of mass-hysterical and sadistic behavior.

  And that’s not to mention the mass hysteria rampant among the New Normals themselves … for example, the parents who are lining up to get their children needlessly “vaccinated” and then rushed into the emergency room with “totally manageable myocarditis.”

  

  Still, as mass hysterical as things are, count on GloboCap to go balls out on the mass hysteria for the next five months. The coming Winter is crunch time, folks. They need to cement the New Normal in place, so they can dial down the “apocalyptic pandemic.” If they’re forced to extend it another year … well, not even the most brainwashed New Normals would buy that.

  Or … all right, sure, the most brainwashed would, but they represent a small minority. Most New Normals are not fanatical totalitarians. They’re just people looking out for themselves, people who will go along with almost anything to avoid being ostracized and punished. But, believe it or not, there is a limit to the level of absurdity they’re prepared to accept, and the level and duration of relentless stress and cognitive dissonance they are prepared to accept.

  Most of them have reached that limit. They have done their part, followed orders, worn the masks, got the “vaccinations,” and are happy to present their “obedience papers” to anyone who demands to see them. Now, they want to go back to “normal.” But they can’t, because … well, because of us.

  See, GloboCap can’t let them return to “normal” (i.e., the new totalitarian version of “normal”) until everyone (i.e., everyone who matters) has submitted to being “vaccinated” and is walking around with a scanable certificate of ideological conformity in their smartphones. They would probably even waive the “vaccination” requirement if we would just bend the knee and pledge our allegiance to the WEF, or BlackRock, or Vanguard, or whoever, and carry around a QR code confirming that we believe in “Science,” the “Covidian Creed,” and whatever other ecumenical corporatist dogma.

  Seriously, the point of this entire exercise (or at least this phase of this entire exercise) is to radically, irrevocably, transform society into a monolithic corporate campus where everyone has to scan their IDs at every turn of an endless maze of perpetually monitored, eco-friendly, gender-fluid, ideologically uniform, non-smoking, totally meat-free “safe spaces” owned and operated by GloboCap, or one of its agents, subsidiaries, and assigns.

  The global-capitalist ruling classes are determined to transform the planet into this fascistic Woke Utopia and enforce unwavering conformity to its valueless values, no matter the cost, and we, “the Unvaccinated,” are standing in their way.

  They can’t just round us up and shoot us — this is global capitalism, not Nazism or Stalinism. They need to break us, to break our spirits, to coerce, gaslight, harass, and persecute us until we surrender our autonomy willingly. And they need to do this during the next five months.

  Preparations therefore are now in progress.

  In the UK, despite a drop in “cases,” and the fact (which the “authorities” have been forced to acknowledge) that the “Vaccinated” can spread the virus just like “the Unvaccinated,” the government is preparing to go to “Plan B” and roll out the social-segregation system that most of Europe has already adopted. In Germany, the “Epidemic Emergency of National Importance” (i.e., the legal pretense for enforcement of the “Corona restrictions”) is due to expire in mid-November (unless they can seriously jack up the “cases,” which seems unlikely at this point), so the authorities are working to revise the “Infektionsschutzgesetz” (the “Infection Protection Act”) to justify maintaining the restrictions indefinitely, despite the absence of an “epidemic,” or an “emergency.”

  And so on. I think you get the picture. This Winter is probably going to get a little nutty … or, OK, more than a little nutty. In terms of manufactured mass hysteria, it is probably going to make Russiagate, the War on Populism, the Global War on Terror, the Red Scare, and every other manufactured mass-hysteria campaign you can possibly think of look like an amateur production of Wagner’s Götterdammerung.

  In other words, kiss reality (or whatever is left of reality at this point) goodbye. The clock is ticking, and GloboCap knows it. If they expect to pull this Great Reset off, they are going to need to terrorize the New-Normal masses into a state of protracted pants-shitting panic and uncontrollable mindless hatred of “the Unvaccinated,” and anyone challenging their rule. A repeat of the Winters of 2020 and 2021 is not going to cut it. It is going to take more than the now standard repertoire of fake and manipulated statistics, dire projections, photos of “death trucks,” non-overflowing overflowing hospitals, and all the other familiar features of the neo-Goebbelsian propaganda juggernaut we have been subjected to for over 18 months.

  They are facing a growing working-class revolt. Millions of people in countries all over the world are protesting in the streets, organizing strikes, walk-outs, “sick-outs,” and mounting other forms of opposition. Despite the corporate media’s Orwellian attempts to blackout any coverage of it, or demonize us all as “far-right extremists,” the New Normals are very aware that this is happening. And the official narrative is finally falling apart. The actual facts are undeniable by anyone with an ounce of integrity, so much so that even major GloboCap propaganda outlets like The Guardian are being forced to grudgingly admit the truth.

  No, GloboCap has no choice at this point but to let loose with every weapon in its arsenal — short of full-blown despotism, which it cannot deploy without destroying itself — and hope that we will finally break down, bend the knee, and beg for mercy.

  I don’t know exactly what they’ve got in mind, but I am definitely not looking forward to it. I’m already pretty worn out as it is. From what I gather, so are a lot of you. If it helps at all, maybe look at it this way. We don’t have to take the battle to them. All we have to do is not surrender, withstand the coming siege, and make it to April.

  Or, if the strikes, sick-outs, and “bad weather” continue, it might not even take that long.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 23:30

• US-Trained Afghan Spies & Special Forces Are Joining ISIS For 'Protection' Against Taliban
  US-Trained Afghan Spies & Special Forces Are Joining ISIS For ‘Protection’ Against Taliban

  Many former national Afghan forces who are now being hunted by the Taliban after their US military backers withdrew from the country in August are turning to the Islamic State for protection, a new investigative Wall Street Journal report finds. 

  Also among those joining the ranks of ISIS in Afghanistan, or ISIS-K, are members of Afghanistan’s US-trained intelligence service. “The number of defectors joining the terrorist group is relatively small, but growing, according to people who know these men, to former Afghan security officials and to the Taliban,” The Wall Street Journal writes.

  Though this is said to be happening in small numbers, and is described as a move out of desperation, it could be a huge boon to ISIS-K’s capabilities, given US-trained intelligence members bring their expertise and capabilities with them to the terrorist group. Critics of the Biden’s administration’s Afghan exit fiasco have long warned that “left behind” US assets would be swooped up by terror groups.

  

  According to WSJ, “Importantly, these new recruits bring to Islamic State critical expertise in intelligence-gathering and warfare techniques, potentially strengthening the extremist organization’s ability to contest Taliban supremacy.”

  As evidence the report cites “An Afghan national army officer who commanded the military’s weapons and ammunition depot in Gardez, the capital of southeastern Paktia province, joined the extremist group’s regional affiliate, Islamic State-Khorasan Province, and was killed a week ago in a clash with Taliban fighters, according to a former Afghan official who knew him.”

  “The former official said several other men he knew, all members of the former Afghan republic’s intelligence and military, also joined Islamic State after the Taliban searched their homes and demanded that they present themselves to the country’s new authorities,” continues the report.

  Alarmingly among those defecting to ISIS ranks amid fears they’ll be killed by the Taliban are elite special forces members. In some cases these Afghan special forces would have received training considered as elite as anyone can get, given their instructors at one point would have been US Navy SEALS or Green Berets. WSJ cites instances of this as follows: “A resident of Qarabagh district just north of Kabul said his cousin, a former senior member of Afghanistan’s special forces, disappeared in September and was now part of an Islamic State cell.”

  The report explains how literally hundreds of thousands of Afghan national troops, intelligence officers, and police haven’t been paid for months since the collapse of the US-backed Kabul government – and at the same time they’re too afraid to show up to work, or identify themselves as part of the former government. At a moment the Taliban is trying to stamp out its ISIS-K rival, these disaffected and unemployed US-trained personnel are fodder for Islamic State recruitment. 

  Hunted by the Taliban and lacking income, members of Afghanistan’s disbanded security forces are enlisting in ISIS, the only resistance movement fighting the new rulers – not unlike Iraq’s disbanded security forces when the US put their enemies in charge. https://t.co/Hb9KZUmlmx

  — Joshua Landis (@joshua_landis) October 31, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And then there’s this interesting widespread believe mentioned in the WSJ report:

  The Taliban have long alleged that Islamic State-Khorasan Province was a creation of Afghanistan’s intelligence service and the U.S. that aimed to sow division within the Islamist insurgency, a claim denied by Washington and by Kabul’s former government.

  Notably there’s the recent historical example of how the resistance was formed in Iraq after the 2003 US invasion. With Saddam Hussein toppled, hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed former Iraqi soldiers and police joined radical groups to wage a deadly insurgency. 

  Already a number of major suicide and car bomb attacks have killed dozens in a few major cities, including Kabul – most of which have been blamed on ISIS-K. Washington officials have at various times suggested the possibility that the Pentagon might in some instances assist in anti-ISIS operations (for example with air support) – but so far the Biden administration has resisted putting such an obviously controversial plan in motion, given it would mean working directly with the Taliban.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 23:05

• Halloweenomics
  Halloweenomics

  Authored by Gary Galles via The American Institute for Economic Research,

  Having gotten the okay from federal authorities that “Halloweening” can resume this year, various fearsome characters may soon be chanting “trick or treat” again at doors all over America. As a consequence, we will be restarting some excellent illustrations of basic economics 

  

  Such an apparent extortion threat seems far from the allegedly dismal science, but in fact, Halloween reflects economics’ central precept that people choose by comparing the benefits and costs they expect to bear as a result of their choices. 

  For example, modern jack-o-lanterns are carved out of pumpkins for economic reasons. They originated in Ireland as hollowed-out turnips used as lanterns, but pumpkins were more plentiful in America and made better lanterns, so the tradition migrated to pumpkins.

  Dark houses and scary costumes originate from benefit-cost comparisons. In the fifth century B.C., Celts celebrated their New Year–Samhain–on October 31. According to legend, on that day the spirits of those who had died during the year searched for living bodies to possess as their only hope of an afterlife. Therefore, people made themselves unattractive “candidates,” to avoid such a fate. Houses were left dark, cold and undesirable, and people dressed ghoulishly to scare away the “shopping” spirits. 

  Trick-or-treating also has economic roots.

  It originated with “souling” in ninth century Europe. On All Souls Day, poor Christians would go door-to-door asking for “soul cakes”–bread studded with currants. The more cakes they received, the more prayers they would say for the donor’s dead relatives. This theological exchange of bread for prayers was viable due to the belief that prayers by the faithful could hasten the passage of the departed into heaven.

  Current Halloween practices also reflect economics. Second only to Christmas as a shopping holiday, Halloween generates about $6 billion in sales, reflecting the vast majority of Americans who mark the occasion in some way. It is the biggest payday for candy makers, reportedly accounting for one-quarter of annual candy sales.

  Halloween also turned when daylight savings time “falls back” into a major issue, in search of added sales from an extra hour of trick-or-treating. Lobbying led George W. Bush to sign the Energy Policy Act, which took effect in 2007, extending daylight savings time by a week to enable it (Now it ends the first Sunday in November). 

  Because Halloween is also the biggest night for costume rentals and purchases and behind only New Year’s and the Super Bowl for alcohol sales, sellers in these industries pray for a weekend Halloween so more adult parties will take place. The Halloween Association trade group has even proposed permanently making Halloween the last Saturday in October, to get more economic bang out of the holiday. 

  Halloween is also one of many children’s first experiences with economic decision-making. 

  How long should you continue to trick or treat? You stop when the costs in terms of tiredness and sore feet outweigh the benefits of the additional candy. Is it really worth walking to the dentist’s house to get a toothbrush? Which streets should you hit? Such decisions reflect costs (how far do I have to walk?) versus the value of likely treat benefits to them. The number of lights on, the income level and number of kids in the neighborhood all enter this calculation. Children also learn to ask others about the likely loot payoff before choosing their path. Some parents even drive their children to other neighborhoods to increase their trick-or-treat haul.

  When are you too old to trick or treat? When the cost of the hassles you get about it outweigh the benefits of the candy and fun you expect.

  Children staying with friends Halloween night also learn how markets work, via candy exchange negotiations. I can still remember my amazement at the large number of hard candies one could get in exchange for, say, a Snickers or Reese’s, in trade, at one post-rampage party when I was young. 

  The economics of Halloween affects others as well. Homeowners learn why the trick-or-treater’s dream–a bowl of candy with a sign saying “take all you want”—doesn’t work very well, except at running you out of candy quickly. Primary school teachers are much more likely to call in sick after Halloween because the children are either still going to be on their sugar high or suffering from the low that follows, and what meager learning will take place doesn’t justify the cost of containing the pandemonium. 

  In other words, economics is far from dismal; it can shed real insight on every activity in a world of scarcity, including Halloween. In fact, when we extort treats with threats the same month that the federal fiscal year begins, and just before major elections in every even-numbered year, it reminds us of how commonly trick-or-treating describes politics as we are forced to bear it.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 22:40

• Goldman Capitulates, Pulls Forward Date Of First Rate Hike By One Full Year To July 2022
  Goldman Capitulates, Pulls Forward Date Of First Rate Hike By One Full Year To July 2022

  Following last week’s bond market turmoil, which led to shock and awe curve-flattening moves forcing various macro funds like Rokos and Alphadyne to capitulate and suffer massive losses, and sent Euribor Dec 22 futures crashing as even the ECB lost control of the front-end, virtually everyone has been forced to admit that the Fed’s “transitory” narrative was dead wrong and the central bank will hike rates far sooner than expected. How much sooner? Well, according to Goldman, which until Friday expected the first rate hike would not take place until July 2023 hast just pulled forward its forecast for liftoff (i.e., the first Fed rate hike) to July 2022, one full year faster than its previous forecast. After that, Goldman expects a second hike in November 2022 and two hikes per year after that.

  Goldman also believes that the FOMC will announce the start of tapering next week, presumably at the $15bn per month pace noted in the September minutes.

  

  If implementation begins in mid-November, the last taper would come in June 2022. While large surprises on the virus, inflation, wage growth, or inflation expectations could prompt a revision, “the hurdle for a change in either direction is high.”

  That said, since the Fed is powerless to do anything to impact supply-chains – the primary source of bottlenecked supply and therefore surging prices – all the central bank will achieve is push the US into a recession faster while sparking a market crash, which in turn will mean an accelerated easing (rate-cuts, NIRP, more QE) cycle some time around early/mid-2023 at which point the Fed will likely start buying stocks, especially if some new veriosion of Covid mysteriously emerges out of China the blue.

  But that’s out view, not Goldman’s. As for the vampire squid, the reason for the dramatic change in the bank’s liftoff call is that Goldman now expect core PCE inflation to remain above 3% – and core CPI inflation above 4% – when the taper concludes as shelter inflation will be running hot.

  

  The next chart shows Goldman’s forecasts for key indicators at the time of the July 2022 meeting. In addition to the strong inflation numbers, the bank also expects GDP growth to have re-accelerated to a 4% pace, with the eventual slowdown coming mostly in the second half of next year, and the unemployment rate to stand at 3.7%. Taken together, we think this will make a seamless move from tapering to rate hikes the path of least resistance. 

  

  Taken together, Goldman thinks “this will make a seamless move from tapering to rate hikes the path of least resistance.”

  Goldman’s unexpected rate hike capitulation aside, the bank maintains its view that growth will slow to a trend-like pace and inflation will drop to the low 2s by late 2022 or early 2023, without an aggressive monetary policy response (here, too, Goldman is once again wrong because at this rate the best case outcome for the US is simply stagflation, while a currency crushing hyperinflation remains the worst). The key reasons cited by Goldman are that the level of fiscal support will continue to decline sharply and supply chain problems should be resolved, turning the inflationary surge in the goods sector into a temporary deflationary drag.

  As a result, Goldman sees the possible paths ahead as bimodal: if something delays liftoff long enough for growth and inflation to fall sharply by end-2022, the Fed could stay on hold for a while. This was the scenario Goldman previously envisioned…. and it was dead wrong just as we said it would be.

  

  Finally, beyond 2022, the bank forecasts one hike every six months: Goldman sees this twice-a-year pace as plausible “either as a dovish response to an environment where inflation remains modestly above 2%, or as an average outcome in an environment where inflation fluctuates above and below 2%.” In support of the first possibility, the bank suspects that both Chair Powell and Governor Brainard wrote down two hikes per year at the end of the forecast horizon in their September dots, conditional on an inflation forecast of just over 2%. This means that they have in mind a somewhat slower pace of tightening and less emphasis on normalization for normalization’s sake than under the Fed’s more preemptive approach last cycle.

  One outstanding question Goldman often gets is whether inflation needs to be above 2% for the FOMC to deliver subsequent rate hikes after liftoff. Here, the hawks would likely say no on the grounds that inflation has already averaged well above 2% this cycle, while doves would say yes because otherwise the FOMC would have returned to the old preemptive approach. Goldman’s forecast of two hikes per year is based on an assumption that the dovish interpretation will win out, but this remains unclear.

  The left side of the chart below, presents a stylized scenario analysis of possible paths for the Fed: Goldman considers a high inflation scenario in which the Fed hikes three times next year and then quarterly after that to a rate 100bp above its estimate of neutral (red line), a later liftoff scenario in which the Fed does not start until 2023Q3 but then proceeds at our baseline pace (green line), and variations on its baseline (dark blue line) in which inflation is usually below 2% from 2023 on (light blue line) or the economy falls into recession at some point (grey line). The combined probability of the baseline scenarios, which are the same in 2022, is 50%.

  

  Here there are two takeaways: first, the risks around the bank’s baseline are symmetric, meaning that our baseline and weighted average views are similar (Exhibit 10, right), which is not always the case. Second, the weighted average view is somewhat below market pricing through 2023 and somewhat above market pricing in 2024 and 2025, suggesting that the market is pricing a bit too much tightening up front and a bit too little later on, even relative to Goldman’s baseline expectation of a fairly slow pace and our view that there is some chance of inflation falling below 2%, resulting in very little further hiking.

  One final observation: Goldman’s decision to shockingly pull forward its first rate hike – and thus once again puke all over its reputation as a rational Fed watcher – has nothing to do with any of the abovementioned fundamental points, and everything to do with the violent market repricing in the short end and in terms of fed tightening. All of that can be summarized in the chart below courtesy of Bloomberg; it shows that as of Friday, the matket priced in odds as high as 87% — 22 basis points of a 25 basis-point increase — of a June 2022 rate increase. A week ago they priced in 16 basis points, a 62% likelihood. All Goldman is doing is following the crowd.

  What Goldman does not get, is that as the market prices in more rate hikes, the market-implied slope of the Fed’s path continues to flatten as traders are also pricing in a policy error, i.e., tightening into a recession. As such, the curve’s peak now suggests at most five to six hikes by the end of 2025 to a level more than 100 basis points short of Fed policy makers’ projection.

  

  In other words, some time in 2023 at the very latest, we will likely see Fed Chairwoman Brainard announce the an accelerated rate cut cycle has arrived, one which may culminate with NIRP even as the Fed buys stocks to keep the wealth effect from collapsing.

   

   

   

   

   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 22:10

• Australia's Top Securities Regulator Says It Will Approve Bitcoin ETFs
  Australia’s Top Securities Regulator Says It Will Approve Bitcoin ETFs

  Authored by Alex McShane via Bitcoin Magazine,

  The Australian Securities And Investments Commission (ASIC) has given early approval to fund managers seeking to launch Bitcoin spot exchange traded funds (ETFs), according to Business Insider.

  

  Many Australian funds have already begun the application process after ASIC green lit the spot ETFs. After months of consulting with experts in the Bitcoin and crypto industry, the corporate regulators issued new guidance for the space, and detailed a draft of regulatory requirements for funds eager to offer Bitcoin spot ETFs.

  In a statement on Friday, ASIC wrote, “We recognise the interest in, and demand for, ETPs and other investment products that hold crypto-assets in Australia.” One requirement for fund managers is they will need to appoint a Bitcoin custodial expert who is “required to ensure crypto-assets are held in safe and secure custody”.

  Safe and secure custody includes storing Bitcoin private keys in air-gapped cold storage, through wallets which are subject to “robust physical security practices.” Redundant backups of seed phrases stored in geographically separate locations are also required, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

  Funds must also front a minimum of $10 million in net tangible assets to launch a Bitcoin ETF, along with adhering to other pricing and risk management obligations.

  ASIC commented on why Bitcoin is one of just two newly approved assets, “We proposed this because we recognize that crypto-assets vary greatly in their features, characteristics, risks and how they operate, and we consider that only some may be appropriate to be held by a registered managed investment scheme.”

  This comes just one week after Valkyrie and ProShares launched the first Bitcoin futures ETFs in the United States. Many in the U.S. are eagerly awaiting the approval of a Bitcoin spot-based ETF, which is considered to be a safer investment vehicle that can more closely track the price of Bitcoin. In any case, Australia’s coming spot ETFs are a step in the right direction in terms of educating traditional investors about Bitcoin and spreading adoption. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 21:50

• OPEC+ Balks At Biden's Demands For More Oil Production
  OPEC+ Balks At Biden’s Demands For More Oil Production

  With oil prices rising to levels last seen during the OPEC Thanksgiving massacre of 2014, developed nations – having realized they made an epic blunder by pushing the Net Zero lunacy far too hard, leaving the oil and gas industry with not nearly enough growth spending to keep the price of oil from surging (as we discussed in “One Bank Crunches The Numbers On Oil Supply/Demand Dynamics, Reaches A Shocking Conclusion“)…

  

  … are now stuck begging OPEC+ to produce more, as the alternative is even higher oil prices and attendant social unrest as even ESG posterchild Larry Fink admits.

  Speaking to reporters in Rome, a senior US official said that the U.S. is talking to other energy-consuming nations about how to press OPEC+ to boost output to address the current supply crunch. That such pleas aimed at OPEC+ come from the same admin which ended the Keystone XL pipeline on its first day, and has done everything to crush shale capex in the US, is hardly a surprise.

  And since even the Biden admin is not dumb enough to grasp that its “demands” will be laughed out of the room, Bloomberg reports that the leaders will also discuss how they might respond if the 23-nation cartel that includes Russia doesn’t take action, the official said, although he wouldn’t speculate on what those options might be.

  The statements from the “senior US official” come just in time to confirm recent media reports that a broad campaign has been waged to persuade OPEC+ to speed up its output increases as Bloomberg reported earlier in the week, citing multiple diplomats and industry insiders involved in the contacts.

  According to a Bloomberg report last week, an intense campaign was being waged behind closed doors to persuade OPEC+ to speed up its output increases. The cartel, which meets virtually on Nov. 4 to review policy, is currently boosting output at a rate of 400,000 barrels a day each month and will continue doing so for the foreseeable future due to uncertainties associated with covid.

  The private efforts come on top of recent public appeals. The Biden administration is increasingly alarmed by rising gasoline prices that have reached a 7-year high, and has been calling on OPEC+ for weeks to pump more oil. Japan, the world’s fourth-largest oil consumer, took the rare step of adding its voice to those calls in late October — a first for Tokyo since 2008. India, the third-largest consumer, has also asked for more crude. China has been silent in public, but is equally vocal in private, diplomats said.

  “We found ourselves in an energy crisis,” Amos Hochstein, the top U.S. energy diplomat, said this week, reflecting a view broadly held view by big oil consuming nations. “Producers should ensure that oil markets and gas markets are balanced.”

  On Friday, Saudi Arabia’s King Salman bin Abdulaziz addressed the Group of 20 summit in Rome saying his government seeks “balance” in energy markets. Which, of course, is politically correct wording for the Saudis, and OPEC+, will ignore pleas to hike output especially since shale is hardly rushing to boost production and the price of oil will soon hit $90 if not $100, with the benefits flowing through to the bottom line of ever oil exporter.

  “The Kingdom will continue its leading role in economic and health upturn and recovery from the global crises, and in finding a balance to achieve security and stability in energy markets,” he said, according to Saudi press agency.

  The OPEC+ cartel meets next on Nov. 4 to conduct a virtual discussion of its policies. However, thanks to Angola we already know the outcome: the African nation rejected consumers’ calls for OPEC+ to increase oil production, saying the group’s plan to gradually add supply is working.

  “Many countries and suppliers are calling for more oil and asking the OPEC+ to increase the oil production,” Diamantino Pedro Azevedo, oil minister for the OPEC member, said in a statement. “But in my humble opinion the current plan of increasing production by 400,000 barrels a day agreed in July by OPEC+ is working well and there is no need to deviate from it.” 

  Translation: not only will OPEC+ not boost production despite the fervent request of virtue-signaling western nations which can’t seem to grasp that pushing “green” policies will result in energy hyperinflation (as we explained here), but that the person in charge of the White House has become such a global laughing stock that OPEC+ seems to enjoy rubbing how powerless he is, in his face.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 21:25

• US Coal Miners "All Sold Out" For 2022
  US Coal Miners “All Sold Out” For 2022

  Top U.S. coal miners are experiencing a massive surge in demand as power companies restart coal-fired power plants due to high natural gas prices to prevent electricity shortages ahead of the winter season. 

  According to Bloomberg, Arch Resources, the second-largest U.S. coal miner, has sold every lump of coal it will extract out of the ground for 2022. The company has sold next year’s coal for 20% over the current spot. Peabody Energy Corp., the top U.S. coal miner, has sold 90% of all its coal from the Powder River Basin area for 2022. 

  Arch’s CEO Paul Lang said the company’s thermal coal output for 2022 is “fully committed.” According to S&P Global Market Intelligence, Arch sold the coal for $16 per ton, well over last week’s $13.25 spot price. 

  “It’s pretty much sold out,” Peabody CEO Jim Grech said Thursday during a conference call. “We only have a small portion left to be sold for 2022 and for 2023.”

  Alliance Resource Partners LP, a coal miner that will ship 32 million tons this year, has already locked in 2022 contracts to deliver 30 tons and 16 tons in 2023. 

  “Our challenge in America is most producers are all sold out,” Alliance CEO Joe Craft said last week.

  Surging demand for coal ahead of the Northern Hemisphere winter comes as the global energy crunch has forced natural gas prices to record highs worldwide. Power plants are transitioning away from natgas generation because it’s uneconomical at current prices, hence the increasing demand for the dirtiest fossil fuel.

  Over the next month, average temperatures for the US-Lower 48 will begin to dive. 

  

  This means electricity demand to heat building structures will increase. 

  

  One of the biggest ironies this year is the transition to coal despite a push by politicians for green energy. One of the culprits behind the global energy crunch is alternative power, such as wind and solar, are unreliable. 

  The latest Bloomberg data shows U.S. coal supplies are at two-decade lows ahead of the winter. 

  

  U.S. power generation derived from coal is increasing. 

  

  Power plants are expected to burn 19% more coal this year.

  

  Arch’s Lang recently warned that coal producers might not have the capacity to respond to demand. 

  Weeks ago, Ernie Thrasher, CEO of Xcoal Energy & Resources, the largest U.S. exporter of fuel, said demand for coal will remain robust well into 2022. He warned about domestic supply constraints and power companies already “discussing possible grid blackouts this winter.” 

  All of this new founded coal demand has been a boon for Peabody Energy shares as earnings have tripled.

  

  The rebound of coal under a Biden administration must be puzzling for many, but it has shown the green transition will take decades, not years. In the meantime, the world returns to coal. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 21:25

• 'I Had To Stand Up And Try To Do Something:' Professor Of Medicine On Suing School Over Vaccine Mandate
  ‘I Had To Stand Up And Try To Do Something:’ Professor Of Medicine On Suing School Over Vaccine Mandate

  Authored by Jan Jekielek and Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Dr. Aaron Kheriaty reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic like many other medical experts. He worked long hours as the United States tried to grapple with the new disease. He had too many conversations with family members whose loved ones were dying from it.

  

  But as time wore on, he started noticing a pattern in public health decisions that seemed to diverge from traditional medical ethics, including an insistence that people at little risk from COVID-19 get a vaccine.

  Kheriaty is now on suspension from the University of California, Irvine, (UCI) and challenging the school’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in court.

  “I had to stand up and try to do something about it,” the professor of psychiatry and director of the UCI Health’s Medical Ethics Program said on The Epoch Times’ “American Thought Leaders.”

  UCI spokespeople declined to comment for this story.

  ‘Liberating’

  Kheriaty contracted COVID-19, the disease caused by Covid-19 in mid-2020. His infection was confirmed by two different tests from two independent labs. His five children and wife also contracted the disease. They all recovered, with none requiring hospital care.

  “It was, for me, actually a very liberating experience afterward, because I didn’t have to worry about the illness anymore. I knew the science on natural immunity,” Kheriaty said.

  Natural immunity refers to when people contract COVID-19 and recover. Dozens of studies have documented that these individuals enjoy strong immunity against CCP virus re-infection. Some of the studies suggest the immunity is superior to that provided by COVID-19 vaccines, particularly the Johnson & Johnson one.

  “I knew that at that point, I was among the safest people to be around, I didn’t have to worry about transmitting the infection to my patients,” Kheriaty said.

  He continued taking precautions, wearing personal protective equipment like masks as required at the hospital. But he was confident he didn’t pose a risk to others, which served as a relief.

  That relief turned into disbelief when, around a year later, the University of California system, which includes UCI, imposed a COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

  Opt-Out is Temporary

  The mandate (pdf) included a natural immunity opt-out, but only temporarily. People who recovered from COVID-19 were told they would only be exempt from the mandate for up to 90 days after their diagnosis.

  University officials cited the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which alleges that the antibody tests it has authorized “are not validated to evaluate specific immunity or protection from SARS-CoV-2 infection.”

  SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP virus.

  “For this reason, individuals who have been diagnosed with COVID-19 or had an antibody test are not permanently exempt from vaccination,” officials said.

  The mandate violated rights outlined in the U.S. Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment, including equal protection and substantive due process, Kheriaty’s lawsuit asserts.

  “Plaintiff is naturally immune to SARS-CoV-2. Therefore, plaintiff is at least as equally situated as those who are fully vaccinated with a COVID-19 vaccine, yet defendants deny plaintiff equal treatment and seek to burden Plaintiff with an unnecessary violation of bodily integrity to which plaintiff does not consent in order to be allowed to continue to work at UCI,” it states.

  The situation creates two classes, vaccinated and unvaccinated, when a more reasonable division would be those who are immune and those who are not, Kheriaty believes.

  “What kind of discriminatory policies do we have in place that are excluding someone like me from the workplace when I’m 99.8 percent protected against reinfection whereas someone who got the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, by the company’s own data that they submitted to the FDA, is 67 percent protective against COVID infection?” he said.

  Whose Burden?

  Kheriaty initially planned to get a COVID-19 vaccine. Now he’s working to change the narrative around mandates.

  Some say proposed natural immunity opt-outs for the mandates would be make it much more difficult to ascertain who meets the threshold, versus a vaccine mandate with no lasting provision for post-infection.

  Most mandates across the country don’t have alternatives for people who had COVID-19 and recovered.

  Kheriaty proposes putting the burden of proof on people who want to opt out.

  “Just have them go get the testing on their own time. You don’t have to administer the T-cell test or the antibody test. You don’t have to go dig up their old medical record establishing that they’ve already had COVID,” he said.

  “Just ask them to bring that in and sign off on that as a kind of immunity passport.”

  Side Effects

  The population of those who recovered and still got a vaccine is known as having “hybrid immunity.”

  A large part of the medical health establishment, including all federal public health agencies, downplay natural immunity. They say it exists but that hybrid immunity is better.

  “I’m not denying at all that people who get infected and recover have a considerable degree of immunity,” Dr. Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said last month. “We also know—and I think we should not let this pass without saying it—that when you get infected and recover, a) you get a good degree of immunity, but b) when you get vaccinated, you dramatically increase that protection, which is something that’s really quite good.”

  A spokesman for Fauci’s agency told The Epoch Times in an email that he sourced from several studies, including one from researchers at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle. They found that a COVID-19 vaccine based on messenger RNA given following COVID-19 infection boosted neutralizing antibodies.

  Many studies, however, show the immunity post-infection is already sky-high for many, leading to questions about why the recovered would then go get a vaccine that, like every jab, has side effects.

  Kheriaty worries about other research that seems to show vaccine recipients with natural immunity experience side effects at a higher frequency than those who are not immune who get a shot.

  “There are now about five independent studies that strongly suggest that individuals that already have natural immunity, when you vaccinate them, the risk of vaccine adverse events or vaccine side effects is higher for that group,” the professor said. “They have higher risk of side effects from the vaccine. It’s not going to help the people around them because natural immunity already is sterilizing, [yet] we don’t yet have any COVID vaccines that offer sterilizing immunity.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 21:00

• Europe On Edge After Russia Unexpectedly Halts Gas Shipments Via Key Pipeline
  Europe On Edge After Russia Unexpectedly Halts Gas Shipments Via Key Pipeline

  In the middle of last week, an increasingly cold Europe exhaled a collective breath of relief when Russian president Vladimir Putin told Gazprom CEO Alexey Miller to “start gradual and planned work to raise gas volumes in your inventories in Europe: in Austria and Germany.” While markets were focused on the (latest) promise by the Kremlin to boost output to Europe, we said that this was just another chapter in Russia’s “cat and mouse” game with a soon to be freezing Europe, that the key word here was “gradual”, and that anyone expecting a sudden surge in Russian nat gas shipments to Europe should not hold their breath as “Putin has been very clear in laying out Russia’s ask to save Europe: activate the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. As long as Europe’s bureaucrats refuse to comply, any hope that electricity costs will slide in the coming weeks will be at best – pardon the pun – a pipe dream.“

  We didn’t have long to wait to be once again proven right: on Saturday, Russian gas supplies through the Yamal – Europe pipeline via Poland to Germany had come to a sudden, unexpected, and screeching halt.

  

  While this was merely the latest political move in the escalating game over Europe’s energy future, with Putin making it very clear who has all the leverage, Gazprom was quick to deny what is patently obvious, and said that European customers’ natural gas requirements were being met as Russia sends gas to western Europe by several different routes, besides the the Yamal – Europe pipeline, which has an annual capacity of up to 33 billion cubic metres. 

  

  “There is no demand for gas transit towards Germany currently,” a Gaz-System spokesperson said in an e-mailed statement.

  Needless to say, that’s not how Europe, or European gas traders will see it after Germany’s Gascade operator said that flows at the Mallnow metering point in Germany, which lies at the Polish border, stopped early on Saturday. 

  And so the political game over the Nord Stream 2 pipeline ratchets up, with Europe likely to see even less gas despite Gazprom saying that the requests of customers in Europe were being met and that fluctuations in demand for Russian gas were dependent on the actual needs of buyer (spoiler alert: European buyers need much more than 0).

  While no gas reached Germany on Saturday, a spokesman for Poland’s state-controlled PGNiG said flows from the east were much lower than usual, but Poland was still receiving amounts consistent with its contract. Poland’s gas grid operator Gaz-System said on Saturday the Yamal pipeline was delivering gas to Poland via the Kondratki compressor station on the east and Mallnow on the west through “reverse mode” – meaning it was shipping gas from west to east.

  One Russian news media report suggested the flow reversal was a short-term problem caused by balmy weather in Germany over the weekend.

  Russian gas export flows have been closely watched as gas prices in Europe have soared amid economic recovery and low inventories. This website was one of the first to anticipate the endgame, writing on August 3 “From Russia With 50% Less Supply: European Nat Gas Prices Explode To Record Highs As Putin Turns The Screws.“

  Gazprom has been accused by the International Energy Agency and some European lawmakers of not doing enough to increase its natural gas supplies to Europe, but the Russian company has said it has been meeting its contractual obligations. A gas transit deal between Russia and Poland expired last year, but Gazprom can book the transit capacity via the pipeline at auctions.

  Adding insult to injury, at the last auction on Oct. 18, Gazprom booked some 32 million cubic metres per day, or 35% of total additional capacity offered by the Polish operator Gas System for transit via the Kondratki transit point for November. The news of the far lower booking sent European gas prices surging, although last week’s Putin statement eased concerns modestly. Should flows via Yamal not restore, expect to see new all time highs in European gas prices in the coming days.

  Meanwhile, we fail to see why there still remains confusion as to what happens next: On Oct 19, Putin made it explicitly clear what so many had though, signaling that no extra gas would flow to Europe without Nord Stream 2. And yet, even though Russia has all the leverage, Europe continues to delay final certification of the critical NS2 pipeline.

  

  Finally, Russia’s choice to halt gas supplies to Europe comes around the time Joe Biden warned Vladimir Putin not to weaponize natural resources for political purposes, confirms just how much influence Brandon Biden has on the world arena.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 20:35

• Australia Confiscating Bank Accounts, Property, Licenses, & Businesses For Non-Compliance With COVID Fines
  Australia Confiscating Bank Accounts, Property, Licenses, & Businesses For Non-Compliance With COVID Fines

  Authored by Sundance via The Last Refuge (emphasis ours),

  Of all the extreme measures carried out by various states in Australia, the collections and confiscations by the State Penalty and Enforcement Register (SPER) might just be the icing on the cake.

  

  During the lengthy COVID lockdown in the state of Queensland, Australia (Brisbane area), most workers were not permitted to work or earn a living.

  Several states stepped in to provide wage subsidies so people could purchase essential products and pay their living expenses.  However, during the lockdown if you were caught violating any of the lockdown rules, you were subject to a civil citation, a fine or ticket for your COVID violation.

  Get caught too far from home, outside your permitted bubble, and you get a ticket.  Get caught spending more than the permitted 1 hour outside, get a ticket.  Get caught without a mask, even by yourself – and yep, ticket.  Enter a closed quarantine zone (park, venue, etc.) and you get a ticket.  Tickets were being handed out by police on the street as well as during random checkpoints on the roadways.

  Additionally, people returning to Queensland were put into a system of involuntary quarantine.  The costs for that quarantine, mostly hotel rooms, were to be paid by the people being involuntarily captive and not allowed home.

  Citizens were required to have their physical location scanned via a QR code on their phone. These checkpoints were to assist in controlling the COVID spread and were used for contact tracing throughout the past two years.  However, the checkpoints and gateway compliance scans also registered your physical location; the consequence was an increased ability for police and COVID compliance officers to catch people violating the COVID rules.  Ex: If you checked in at the grocery store, they knew how far from home you are, and the police could figure out if you violated your one hour of time outside the home at the next checkpoint.

  The result of all this compliance monitoring was thousands of fines, civil citations for violating COVID rules.  Thousands of people given thousands of fines that would need to be paid.

  Now the state is requiring all of those civil citations get paid, or else.  And the enforcement actions to collect these fines from the State Penalty and Enforcement Register are quite extreme.  Citizens who have outstanding tickets are finding their driver’s licenses suspended; bank accounts are being frozen and seized; homes and property are are being confiscated, as well as business licenses suspended for outstanding citations.

  “Queenslanders who received fines for breaking Covid-19 rules risk having their homes seized and bank accounts frozen in a government crackdown to collect $5.2 million in repayments.” (LINK)

  Brisbane Times – “SPER was undertaking “active enforcement” on another 18.4 per cent of fines, worth about $1 million, which a spokesman said “may include garnishing bank accounts or wages, registering charges over property, or suspending driver licences”.   The remaining 25.2 per cent of fines were either under investigation or still open to payment without further action being taken.

  Outside SPER’s work, Queensland Health took the unusual step of calling in private debt collectors to chase up $5.7 million amounting from 2045 significantly overdue invoices for hotel quarantine.  (read more)

  

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 20:10

• Philadelphia Passes "Anti-Driving While Black" Measure That Bans Minor Traffic Stops
  Philadelphia Passes “Anti-Driving While Black” Measure That Bans Minor Traffic Stops

  Today in “liberal cities are moving one step closer to total lawlessness” news, it was reported that Philadelphia’s City Council has passed a measure that bans officers from pulling over drivers for traffic violations like broken taillights or expired registrations.

  The measure, being called an “anti-driving-while-black” law, is being seen by social justice advocates as a “victory for equity”, according to the Delaware Valley Journal. 

  Councilmember Isaiah Thomas’ Driving Equality bill supposedly seeks “to address the tension between members of the Black community and police by reducing the number of minor traffic stops”.

  Thomas wants to redirect police time toward “keeping the community safe” while removing negative interactions that “widen the racial divide”.

  We guess the idea of reprimanding officers for pulling people over for no reason, instead of actually having a valid reason, never crossed his mind. Because keeping things “safer” now apparently means you can drive around in a car with busted headlights and no registration. Ah, the sweet smell of progress.

  Thomas commented: “To many people who look like me, a traffic stop is a rite of passage – we pick out cars, determine routes, and plan our social interactions around the fact that police will likely pull us over. With this vote, I breathe a sigh of relief that my sons and my friends’ children will grow up in a city where being pulled over is not a rite of passage but a measure of the safety of your driving and vehicle, regardless of the skin color of the driver. That’s why I am grateful to my colleagues for voting to pass my Driving Equality bills.”

  

  NYPD deputy inspector John Hall conducted an analysis of the approach and said: “Experience during the pandemic has revealed that removing police from traffic enforcement leads to more dangerous streets, more disorder, and more crime. Public safety policy decisions and legislation must be informed by data and made with eyes wide open to their consequences.”

  Once Mayor Kenney signs the measure into law, it’ll also create a database of all traffic stops.

  Thomas concluded: “Data will tell us if we should end more traffic stops or amend how this is enforced. Data will also tell other cities that Philadelphia is leading on this civil rights issue, and it can be replicated. Data and lived experiences showed us the problem, and data will be key to making sure this is done right.”

  The bill passed city council 14-2, with the council’s only two Republican members voting against it. 

  Former Upper Darby Police Superintendent Mike Chitwood, who had also worked as a police officer in Philadelphia, said: “Some of the best arrests that I ever made were based on a headlight out or a turn signal off. I can recall arresting an individual with six handguns in a trunk of a car and masks and rope based on the fact that his rear light wasn’t working.”
   

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 19:45

• Hedge Fund CIO: Our New Reality Will Depend On The Fierce Clash Between Centralized And Decentralized Power
  Hedge Fund CIO: Our New Reality Will Depend On The Fierce Clash Between Centralized And Decentralized Power

  By Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management

  “Your devices won’t be the focal point of your attention anymore,” said Mark Zuckerberg in his keynote, shuffling through a computer-generated landscape, renaming his firm Meta. “We’re starting to see a lot of these technologies coming together in the next five or 10 years,” he explained, server farms proliferating across the globe, humming, processor speeds advancing inexorably along parabolic curves.

  “A lot of this is going to be mainstream and a lot of us will be creating and inhabiting worlds that are just as detailed and convincing as this one, on a daily basis,” said the founder/architect, extending the epic journey of a firm first built to rank undergrad women’s appearance to one that now intends to construct humanity’s new reality: the Metaverse.

  Zuckerberg’s detractors went wild. “Meta as in ‘we are a cancer to democracy metastasizing into a global surveillance and propaganda machine for boosting authoritarian regimes and destroying civil society… for profit!,’” tweeted AOC. Others were less kind. But Meta carried on, making massive capital investments to win an intensifying war for its very existence.

  You see, Facebook, like every other organization based upon centralized control – which is to say virtually every institution – is threatened with extinction by a growing army of revolutionary entrepreneurs, developing decentralized alternatives. Incumbents across the most vulnerable industries are sending lobbyists to fortify regulatory moats from an assault by these innovators.

  Zuckerberg can hope for no such DC support. A wildly successful decentralized Metaverse would utterly destroy Facebook. So, before he loses his entire empire, he must build a wall around his existing network, and pray his users do not flee Meta’s centralized Metaverse. Meta’s longer-term odds of success are not high.

  And for those of us looking for frameworks to understand this emerging reality, the fierce battle between centralized and decentralized power is a focal point. The conflict will affect every industry, institution. And of course, understanding what is likely to become valuable in this new world that few can yet imagine, let alone understand, presents an enormous opportunity.

  * * *

  Anecdote

  “Web 1.0 was flat, static,” said the visionary, unseating the slow-moving incumbents. “Web 2.0 arrived and was dynamic, interactive — it is what we mostly experience today,” added the founder/CEO, lifting his phone from the table, looking at the screen, placing it gently down. “Web 3.0 will be immersive. And we will spend an increasing amount of our lives within the new worlds that it will open.”

  I’d zipped into the city for our meeting, on autopilot, handsfree, crazy stop-and-go traffic along the Hudson, software navigating the chaos at 60mph. “In these new worlds, our experiences will be virtual, the currencies we use will naturally be native to those worlds, the assets will be digital.” And he paused, thoughtful, entirely at ease.

  “When I started this company, I saw a future where early digital currencies would become increasingly popular, more valuable. And I expected these technologies would eventually prove useful and solve real world problems,” he said. “Even I am surprised by how quickly the latter has come.”

  Venture capital is cascading into blockchain companies that are racing to replace the things incumbent institutions presently do; only faster, cheaper, more securely. Some protocols are built to do things we previously considered impossible. Still others do things not previously imagined. These revolutionary pioneers see a world very different from what has been. They have a broadening view of what is possible.

  “As this future manifests, all assets will be tokenized — the virtual assets we already see today, the financial assets we have always traded, and many real assets we never even considered tokenizing, exchanging, trading.”

  While we will split our time between the virtual and the real, all our possessions will gravitate to the blockchain, tokenized, fractionalized. “And we will supply the most trusted custodial wallets to secure digital assets for everyone in that future.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 19:20

• Fully-Vaccinated White House PressSec Psaki Tests Positive For COVID
  Fully-Vaccinated White House PressSec Psaki Tests Positive For COVID

  Just two weeks after defending President Biden’s mask-wearing-mandate violation, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki has tested positive for COVID… and she’s a ‘double-masker’…

  

  Having told people to pay attention to the president’s policies and “not overly focus on moments in time” such as being filmed without a mask inside a Washington, D.C., restaurant, Psaki is now the highest-profile White House official to publicly disclose they contracted the virus, raising questions about how the presumably always-mask-wearing-and-always-socially-distanced-and-fully-vaccinated official could have got the virus given the ‘science’.

  Psaki opted not to travel with President Biden and other staff members to Europe on Thursday after a member of her household tested positive for the virus, she said in a statement. She last held a press briefing with reporters on Wednesday at the White House.

  “While I have not had close contact in person with the President or senior members of the White House staff since Wednesday – and tested negative for four days after that last contact – I am disclosing today’s positive test out of an abundance of transparency,” she said in a statement.

  “I last saw the President on Tuesday, when we sat outside more than six-feet apart, and wore masks.”

  

  Psaki said she has mild symptoms “thanks to the vaccine…which has enabled [her] to continue working from home,” and will return to work after a 10-day quarantine “beyond CDC guidance” following a negative test.

  So much virtue signaled in one sentence.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 18:55

• I've Been Driving Trucks For 20 Years, I'll Tell You Why America's "Shipping Crisis" Will Not End
  I’ve Been Driving Trucks For 20 Years, I’ll Tell You Why America’s “Shipping Crisis” Will Not End

  Authored by Ryan Johnson via Medium.com,

  I have a simple question for every ‘expert’ who thinks they understand the root causes of the shipping crisis:

  Why is there only one crane for every 50–100 trucks at every port in America?

  No ‘expert’ will answer this question.

  

  I’m a Class A truck driver with experience in nearly every aspect of freight. My experience in the trucking industry of 20 years tells me that nothing is going to change in the shipping industry.

  Let’s start with understanding some things about ports.

  Outside of dedicated port trucking companies, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers. There is a reason for that.

  Think of going to the port as going to WalMart on Black Friday, but imagine only ONE cashier for thousands of customers. Think about the lines. Except at a port, there are at least THREE lines to get a container in or out. The first line is the ‘in’ gate, where hundreds of trucks daily have to pass through 5–10 available gates. The second line is waiting to pick up your container. The third line is for waiting to get out. For each of these lines the wait time is a minimum of an hour, and I’ve waited up to 8 hours in the first line just to get into the port. Some ports are worse than others, but excessive wait times are not uncommon. It’s a rare day when a driver gets in and out in under two hours. By ‘rare day’, I mean maybe a handful of times a year. Ports don’t even begin to have enough workers to keep the ports fluid, and it doesn’t matter where you are, coastal or inland port, union or non-union port, it’s the same everywhere.

  Furthermore, I’m fortunate enough to be a Teamster — a union driver — an employee paid by the hour. Most port drivers are ‘independent contractors’, leased onto a carrier who is paying them by the load. Whether their load takes two hours, fourteen hours, or three days to complete, they get paid the same, and they have to pay 90% of their truck operating expenses (the carrier might pay the other 10%, but usually less.) The rates paid to non-union drivers for shipping container transport are usually extremely low. In a majority of cases, these drivers don’t come close to my union wages. They pay for all their own repairs and fuel, and all truck related expenses. I honestly don’t understand how many of them can even afford to show up for work. There’s no guarantee of ANY wage (not even minimum wage), and in many cases, these drivers make far below minimum wage. In some cases they work 70 hour weeks and still end up owing money to their carrier.

  So when the coastal ports started getting clogged up last spring due to the impacts of COVID on business everywhere, drivers started refusing to show up. Congestion got so bad that instead of being able to do three loads a day, they could only do one. They took a 2/3 pay cut and most of these drivers were working 12 hours a day or more. While carriers were charging increased pandemic shipping rates, none of those rate increases went to the driver wages. Many drivers simply quit. However, while the pickup rate for containers severely decreased, they were still being offloaded from the boats. And it’s only gotten worse.

  Earlier this summer, both BNSF and Union Pacific Railways shut down their container yards in the Chicago area for a week for inbound containers. These are some of the busiest ports in the country. They had miles upon miles of stack (container) trains waiting to get in to be unloaded. According to BNSF, containers were sitting in the port 1/3 longer than usual, and they simply ran out of space to put them until some of the ones already on the ground had been picked up. Though they did reopen the area ports, they are still over capacity. Stack trains are still sitting loaded, all over the country, waiting to get into a port to unload. And they have to be unloaded, there is a finite number of railcars. Equipment shortages are a large part of this problem.

  One of these critical shortages is the container chassis.

  A container chassis is the trailer the container sits on. Cranes will load these in port. Chassis are typically container company provided, as trucking companies generally don’t have their own chassis units. They are essential for container trucking. While there are some privately owned chassis, there aren’t enough of those to begin to address the backlog of containers today, and now drivers are sitting around for hours, sometimes days, waiting for chassis.

  The impact of the container crisis now hitting residencies in proximity to trucking companies. Containers are being pulled out of the port and dropped anywhere the drivers can find because the trucking company lots are full. Ports are desperate to get containers out so they can unload the new containers coming in by boat. When this happens there is no plan to deliver this freight yet, they are literally just making room for the next ship at the port. This won’t last long, as this just compounds the shortage of chassis. Ports will eventually find themselves unable to move containers out of the port until sitting containers are delivered, emptied, returned, or taken to a storage lot (either loaded or empty) and taken off the chassis there so the chassis can be put back into use. The priority is not delivery, the priority is just to clear the port enough to unload the next boat.

  What happens when a container does get to a warehouse?

  A large portion of international containers must be hand unloaded because the products are not on pallets. It takes a working crew a considerable amount of time to do this, and warehouse work is usually low wage. A lot of it is actually only temp staffed. Many full time warehouse workers got laid off when the pandemic started, and didn’t come back. So warehouses, like everybody else, are chronically short staffed.

  When the port trucker gets to the warehouse, they have to wait for a door (you’ve probably seen warehouse buildings with a bank of roll-up doors for trucks on one side of the building.) The warehouses are behind schedule, sometimes by weeks. After maybe a 2 hour wait, the driver gets a door and drops the container — but now often has to pick up an empty, and goes back to the port to wait in line all over again to drop off the empty.

  At the warehouse, the delivered freight is unloaded, and it is usually separated and bound to pallets, then shipped out in much smaller quantities to final destination. A container that had a couple dozen pallets of goods on it will go out on multiple trailers to multiple different destinations a few pallets at a time.

  From personal experience, what used to take me 20–30 minutes to pick up at a warehouse can now take three to four hours. This slowdown is warehouse management related: very few warehouses are open 24 hours, and even if they are, many are so short staffed it doesn’t make much difference, they are so far behind schedule. It means that as a freight driver, I cannot pick up as much freight in a day as I used to, and since I can’t get as much freight on my truck, the whole supply chain is backed up. Freight simply isn’t moving.

  It’s important to understand what the cost implications are for consumers with this lack of supply in the supply chain. It’s pure supply and demand economics. Consider volume shipping customers who primarily use ‘general freight’, which is the lowest cost shipping and typically travels in a ‘space available’ fashion. They have usually been able to get their freight moved from origination to delivery within two weeks. Think about how you get your packages from Amazon. Even without paying for Prime, you usually get your stuff in a week. The majority of freight travels at this low cost, ‘no guarantee of delivery date’ way, and for the most part it’s been fine for both shippers and consumers. Those days are coming to an end.

  People who want their deliveries in a reasonable time are going to have to start paying premium rates. There will be levels of priority, and each increase in rate premium essentially jumps that freight ahead of all the freight with lower or no premium rates. Unless the lack of shipping infrastructure is resolved, things will back up in a cascading effect to the point where if your products are going general freight, you might wait a month or two for delivery. It’s already starting. If you use truck shipping in any way, you’ve no doubt started to see the delays. Think about what’s going to happen to holiday season shipping.

  What is going to compel the shippers and carriers to invest in the needed infrastructure? The owners of these companies can theoretically not change anything and their business will still be at full capacity because of the backlog of containers. The backlog of containers doesn’t hurt them. It hurts anyone paying shipping costs — that is, manufacturers selling products and consumers buying products. But it doesn’t hurt the owners of the transportation business — in fact the laws of supply and demand mean that they are actually going to make more money through higher rates, without changing a thing. They don’t have to improve or add infrastructure (because it’s costly), and they don’t have to pay their workers more (warehouse workers, crane operators, truckers).

  The ‘experts’ want to say we can do things like open the ports 24/7, and this problem will be over in a couple weeks. They are blowing smoke, and they know it. Getting a container out of the port, as slow and aggravating as it is, is really the easy part, if you can find a truck and chassis to haul it. But every truck driver in America can’t operate 24/7, even if the government suspends Hours Of Service Regulations (federal regulations determining how many hours a week we can work/drive), we still need to sleep sometime. There are also restrictions on which trucks can go into a port. They have to be approved, have RFID tags, port registered, and the drivers have to have at least a TWIC card (Transportation Worker Identification Credential from the federal Transportation Security Administration). Some ports have additional requirements. As I have already said, most trucking companies won’t touch shipping containers with a 100 foot pole. What we have is a system with a limited amount of trucks and qualified drivers, many of whom are already working 14 hours a day (legally, the maximum they can), and now the supposed fix is to have them work 24 hours a day, every day, and not stop until the backlog is cleared. It’s not going to happen. It is not physically possible. There is no “cavalry” coming. No trucking companies are going to pay to register their trucks to haul containers for something that is supposedly so “short term,” because these same companies can get higher rate loads outside the ports. There is no extra capacity to be had, and it makes NO difference anyway, because If you can’t get a container unloaded at a warehouse, having drivers work 24/7/365 solves nothing.

  What it will truly take to fix this problem is to run EVERYTHING 24/7: ports (both coastal and domestic), trucks, and warehouses. We need tens of thousands more chassis, and a much greater capacity in trucking.

  Before the pandemic, through the pandemic, and really for the whole history of the freight industry at all levels, owners make their money by having low labor costs — that is, low wages and bare minimum staffing. Many supply chain workers are paid minimum wages, no benefits, and there’s a high rate of turnover because the physical conditions can be brutal (there aren’t even bathrooms for truckers waiting hours at ports because the port owners won’t pay for them. The truckers aren’t port employees and port owners are only legally required to pay for bathroom facilities for their employees. This is a nationwide problem). For the whole supply chain to function efficiently every point has to be working at an equal capacity. Any point that fails bottlenecks the whole system. Right now, it’s ALL failing spectacularly TOGETHER, but fixing one piece won’t do anything. It ALL needs to be fixed, and at the same time.

  How do you convince truckers to work when their pay isn’t guaranteed, even to the point where they lose money?

  Nobody is compelling the transportation industries to make the needed changes to their infrastructure. There are no laws compelling them to hire the needed workers, or pay them a living wage, or improve working conditions. And nobody is compelling them to buy more container chassis units, more cranes, or more storage space. This is for an industry that literally every business in the world is reliant on in some way or another.

  My prediction is that nothing is going to change and the shipping crisis is only going to get worse. Nobody in the supply chain wants to pay to solve the problem. They literally just won’t pay to solve the problem. At the point we are at now, things are so backed up that the backups THEMSELVES are causing container companies, ports, warehouses, and trucking companies to charge massive rate increases for doing literally NOTHING. Container companies have already decreased the maximum allowable times before containers have to be back to the port, and if the congestion is so bad that you can’t get the container back into the port when it is due, the container company can charge massive late fees. The ports themselves will start charging massive storage fees for not getting containers out on time — storage charges alone can run into thousands of dollars a day. Warehouses can charge massive premiums for their services, and so can trucking companies. Chronic understaffing has led to this problem, but it is allowing these same companies to charge ten times more for regular services. Since they’re not paying the workers any more than they did last year or five years ago, the whole industry sits back and cashes in on the mess it created. In fact, the more things are backed up, the more every point of the supply chain cashes in. There is literally NO incentive to change, even if it means consumers have to do holiday shopping in July and pay triple for shipping.

  This is the new normal. All brought to you by the ‘experts’ running our supply chains.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 18:30

• Zillow Caught Holding The Bag As 93% Of Phoenix 'Flipping' Portfolio Listed At Loss
  Zillow Caught Holding The Bag As 93% Of Phoenix ‘Flipping’ Portfolio Listed At Loss

  Two weeks ago we reported that Zillow’s electronic house flipping operation had been underperforming – as the real estate company had been buying houses at inflated prices and flipping them for a loss.

  In Phoenix, Arizona – Zillow’s second-largest portfolio after Atlanta – things are worse than we thought. According to an analysis by Insider, 93% of the homes Zillow bought to flip are now listed at less than what they paid.

  

  Zillow’s iBuyer division – also known as Zillow Offers, uses artificial ‘intelligence’ to set target prices for homes, and lets sellers receive an almost immediate offer on their property, almost entirely online. Now, it appears Zillow’s AI-driven wager was dead wrong.

  Insider reviewed all the homes for sale by Zillow in the Phoenix metropolitan area as of October 27. Out of 224 homes, 208 — or 92.9% — were priced below what Zillow paid. The potential losses highlight the risks of the iBuyer business, which aims to buy and resell properties for a profit in a roller-coaster market.

  After purchasing 5,661 homes across 25 metropolitan areas from Austin to Tucson since the beginning of 2021, Zillow announced on October 17 that it would stop buying homes for the remainder of 2021. Chief Operating Officer Jeremy Wacksman said the pause was because of “an operational backlog for renovations and closings” that he blamed on “a labor- and supply-constrained economy inside a competitive real estate market.” -Insider

  What’s more, while most of the Zillow sales were first listed at more than they paid – eventually receiving price cuts that brought them into the red, 36.5% of properties were listed for less than the company first paid. Just 16 homes were listed above Zillow’s purchase price – and all  16 were listed within the last two weeks, meaning they have yet to experience meaningful price cuts.

  In short, Zillow is having issues clearing out its existing inventory and just needs it moved. As Insider notes, if the company sold all of it’s Phoenix homes right now at their current list prices, it would lose $6.3 million dollars. Right now, their median loss per home in the area is nearly $29,000.

  Given that the Case-Schiller index indicates Phoenix real estate is still on fire, this may simply boil down to Zillow’s out-of-control ‘AI’ getting off on outbidding plebs in a greedy bet on unlimited growth.

  

  Launched in 2017, Zillow’s iBuying arm uses a wide array of real-estate data with the goal of quickly and efficiently acquiring properties to flip for a profit. The program has vacuumed up properties across the country to flip, only to be met with fierce competition from services such as Redfin, Offerpad and Opendoor. And according to iBuying analyst Mike DelPrete, Zillow’s competitors aren’t having the same problems – with Opendoor’s median home priced $4,400 above what they paid (which, quite frankly, is also pretty terrible).

  Zillow reports earnings on Nov. 2, so might be an interesting call to check out to say the least.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 18:05

• 13 Years After Its 'Birth', Bitcoin Adoption Continues To Accelerate
  13 Years After Its ‘Birth’, Bitcoin Adoption Continues To Accelerate

  The 13th birthday of the Bitcoin white paper has crept up just as the world continues to deal with a global pandemic, inflation fears, an astounding memecoin mania trend and growing institutional adoption of the cryptocurrency space.

  

  image courtesy of CoinTelegraph

  As CoinTelegraph’s Francesco Rodrigues details, on October 31, 2008, Satoshi Nakamoto released the Bitcoin white paper to a cryptography mailing list hosted by Metzdow. The Metzdow mailing list was run by a group of cypherpunks and was filled with ideas meant to create a form of digital currency: some of these have even been cited in the Bitcoin white paper.

  Satoshi’s white paper came in a message titled “Bitcoin P2P e-cash paper,” in which Nakamoto explained that his digital currency is fully peer-to-peer (P2P) and requires no trusted third party for a transaction to occur. Through a peer-to-peer network, Bitcoin solved the double-spending problem. Bitcoin also allowed network participants to remain anonymous and was secured through a proof-of-work (PoW) consensus algorithm.

  

  At the time, the white paper wasn’t received the way people would expect it to be, knowing what they know today. Only a handful of people saw Nakamoto’s email and replied with their thoughts and concerns surrounding Bitcoin.

  But as Jacques Chirac writes at Bitcoin Magazine, the Bitcoin network has come to dominate and even define the cryptocurrency space, spawning a legion of altcoin followers and representing an alternative to fiat government currencies such as the U.S. dollar and the Euro, and to metal currencies such as gold and silver coins.

  

  Global cryptocurrency usage has increased by 880% in the last year, particularly in Vietnam, India, Pakistan, and other developing countries. The 2021 Global Crypto Adoption Index, titled “Geography of Cryptocurrency,” compared countries’ cryptocurrency adoption based on three primary parameters: on-chain retail value transferred, on-chain cryptocurrency value received, and peer-to-peer exchange trade volumes

  According to specialists from these nations, many people utilize peer-to-peer cryptocurrency exchanges as their main on-ramp into cryptocurrencies frequently because they do not have access to centralized exchanges. Significant currency depreciation in many developing countries leads individuals to buy cryptocurrencies on peer-to-peer platforms to protect their investment value.

  International transactions are also prevalent in these areas, whether for individual remittances or business use cases like buying products to import and sell. The quantity of national currency that people may move out of the country is limited. Although China was ranked fourth and the United States was ranked sixth in last year’s survey, their positions have dropped to 13th and eighth, respectively.

  What Are The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Bitcoin?

  Advantages:

  • Bitcoin users have comprehensive control over their reserves.

  Traditional fiat currencies are responsive to several restrictions and hazards. Banks, for example, are flashed to economic booms and busts. As has happened in the past, these circumstances may sometimes result in bank runs and crashes. This implies that consumers do not have complete control over their funds.

  • There are no costs associated with Bitcoin transactions.

  Bitcoin users are not subjected to the invocation of conventional banking costs associated with fiat currencies. While fiat currency exchanges impose so-called “maker” and “taker” fees, as well as occasional deposit and withdrawal fees, Bitcoin users are not subject to these fees. This adds, amongst other things, no account sustaining or minimum balance fees, no overdraft costs, and no returned deposit penalties.

  • For international payments, Bitcoin transactions offer minimal transaction costs.

  Fees and currency charges are expected in standard wire transfers and international transactions. Transacting via the Bitcoin network is typically cheaper than bank transfers since there are no intermediate organizations or governments involved. This may be an essential benefit for tourists. Furthermore, bitcoin transfers are instantaneous, bypassing the hassle of usual permission methods and delivery times.

  • Bitcoin transactions are entirely safe.

  Bitcoin is not physical money. As a result, robbers will be unable to physically steal it. Hackers may steal a person’s cryptocurrency if they have access to the wallet’s private keys. However, stealing bitcoin is theoretically impossible with adequate protection and industry-standard practices. While there have been many other allegations of cryptocurrency exchange hacks, bitcoin transactions have remained unaffected. In conclusion, transactions offered out between two (or more) addresses are protected.

  Disadvantages:

  • Bitcoin is not yet accepted across the nation

  Bitcoin is still only accepted by a limited number of internet businesses. As a result, relying only on bitcoin as a currency is near impossible. It’s also possible that governments may compel firms to stop accepting bitcoin in order to monitor consumers’ transactions.

  • Wallets can be misplaced

  One’s bitcoin is dramatically “lost” if a hard drive fails or a virus corrupts data, and the wallet file is damaged. There is nothing that can get the money back. These coins will remain orphaned in the system. This has the potential to bankrupt a wealthy bitcoin investor in a matter of seconds, with no means of replacement. The investor’s coins will be enduringly orphaned as well.

  • There is no buyer protection.

  When things are purchased with bitcoin, and the vendor fails to deliver the goods, there is no way to reverse the transaction. The problem can be approached by utilizing a third-party escrow service such as ClearCoin. However, escrow services would then take on the role of banks, making bitcoin more like conventional currencies.

  • Technical flaws that aren’t known

  The Bitcoin system may have vulnerabilities that have yet to be discovered. Because this is a relatively new method, if bitcoin were extensively accepted and a vulnerability was found, it might result in enormous riches for the exploiter at the cost of the Bitcoin economy.

  How Is Bitcoin Used In Other Counties?

  Since its commencement in 2009, bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies that followed have been fraught with contention and controversies. While bitcoin has been extensively attacked for its volatility, use in illicit activities, and the amount of energy required to mine it, some people, especially in developing countries, view it with great hope amidst economic storms.

  However, as many individuals turn to bitcoin as an investment, these problems have materialized in a slew of new limitations on how they may be used. The authoritative position of bitcoin varies significantly from nation to nation, with specific relationships still being established or changing often. While most governments do not make it unlawful to use bitcoin, its position as a payment method or a commodity differs, with different regulatory consequences.

  Some nations have imposed restrictions on how bitcoin may be used, with banks prohibiting their clients from transacting in cryptocurrencies. Other countries have explicitly outlawed the usage of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, imposing stiff fines on anybody who transacts in them. These are the nations where bitcoin and the state have a tense relationship. Despite this, it appears that the future may hold more countries continuing to look to bitcoin.

  This is a guest post by Jacques Chirac. Opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 17:40

• Iran Blames Israel & US For Cyberattack That Crippled Nationwide Fuel Network
  Iran Blames Israel & US For Cyberattack That Crippled Nationwide Fuel Network

  Starting Tuesday Iran’s gas station network saw many thousands of stations go offline as Iranians across the country were unable to use government-electronic cards for government subsidized gas due to a massive cyberattack on the online system that allows payment processing.

  The network was reportedly down for at least 12 hours, with some gas stations being disabled for days – and almost 1,000 still disabled into the weekend, sparking widespread anger as long lines formed and fuel was urgently sold at greatly marked-up cash prices. Amid an ongoing Iranian investigation, a top Iranian general is the earliest to lay direct blame on Israel and America for the crippling cyberattack.

  

  “From our point of view, this attack has definitely been carried out by the Americans and the Zionists,” said Brig. Gen. Gholam Reza Jalali, who serves chief of the Civil Defense Organization of Iran head.

  He was quoted in Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency as saying further that “Serious infrastructural cyber warfare has started.” He urged, “We should take it seriously and rectify our areas of weakness.”

  “We are still unable to say forensically, but analytically I believe it was carried out by the Zionist Regime, the Americans and their agents,” Jalali said in the state TV in an interview of the ongoing investigation. The influential general explained that this fresh cyberattack resembles to prior ones where authorities concluded Israeli and US covert involvement:

  Tuesday’s attack “technically” resembles two previous incidents whose perpetrators “were unquestionably our enemies, namely the United States and the Zionist regime”, the Revolutionary Guards’ Gholamreza Jalali said.

  “We have analysed two incidents, the railway accident and the Shahid Rajaei port accident, and we found that they were similar,” Jalali, who heads a civil defense unit responsible for cyber activity, told state television late Saturday.

  As of Saturday, the AFP reports that “Around 3,200 of the country’s 4,300 service stations have since been reconnected to the central distribution system, the National Oil Products Distribution Company said, quoted Saturday by state news agency IRNA.”

  Iran-linked hackers leak data from Israeli LGBT dating site (Revenge for Israeli hacking of Iranian gas stations?) https://t.co/2c4ZpLgKhW https://t.co/G5skRqlpFT

  — Jim Clancy (@ClancyReports) October 31, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Neither Washington nor Tel Aviv have yet to address the new Iranian charges, which in the past have tended to go unanswered. There’s also the possibility of well-funded Iranian opposition and dissident groups, namely the MEK, or “People’s Mujahedin of Iran” – which has itself been known to work with Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency. It also has support from American politicians, with former Vice President Mike Pence on Thursday speaking at an MEK conference in D.C.

  Tyler Durden
  Sun, 10/31/2021 – 17:15

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Durham Probe Inches Closer To Hillary As Alfa Bank Hoax Plot Thickens
  Durham Probe Inches Closer To Hillary As Alfa Bank Hoax Plot Thickens

  Authored by Paul Sperry via RealClearInvestigations.com,

  A Hillary Clinton campaign operation to plant a false rumor about Donald Trump setting up a “secret hotline” to Moscow through a Russian bank was much broader than known and involved multiple U.S. agencies, according to declassified documents and sources briefed on an ongoing criminal investigation of the scheme.

  

  In addition to the FBI, the 2016 Clinton campaign tried to convince the Obama administration’s State Department, Justice Department and Central Intelligence Agency to look into the hoax, and continued pressing the issue even after Trump was inaugurated in January 2017.

  The goal was to trigger federal investigative activity targeting her Republican rival and leak the damaging information to the media.

  “The Clinton machine flooded the FBI with pressure from a number of angles until investigations of Trump were opened and reopened,” said one of the briefed sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive law enforcement matter. “The deception was wide-ranging.”

  

  Michael Sussmann: The indicted former Clinton campaign attorney wasn’t the only one feeding the bogus Alfa Bank story to the feds. perkinscoie.com

  Special Counsel John Durham outlined the FBI part of the scheme in a felony indictment of Michael Sussmann. The former Clinton campaign lawyer was charged last month with making a false statement to the former general counsel of the FBI when he claimed he was not working “for any client” in bringing to the FBI’s attention allegations of a secret channel of communication between computer servers in Trump Tower and the Alfa Bank in Russia.

  According to the indictment, Sussmann was in fact acting on behalf of clients including the Clinton campaign, and an unnamed tech executive who RCI has previously reported is Rodney L. Joffe, a regular adviser to the Biden White House on cybersecurity and infrastructure policies.

  Internal emails reveal the Clinton operatives knew the links they made between Trump and Russia were “weak,” even describing them as a “red herring,” but fed them to investigators anyway.

  

  The Sussmann indictment revealed the doubts of those developing the Alfa Bank story. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia

  After Sussmann’s meeting with the FBI in September 2016, the Clinton campaign approached the State Department the following month with the same lead, this time using paid Clinton campaign subcontractor Christopher Steele to feed the rumors. A former British intelligence officer, Steele was offered as a reliable source to help corroborate the rumors. On Oct. 11, 2016, Steele gave his contact at Foggy Bottom documents alleging that a supposed hidden server at Trump Tower was pinging Moscow.

  

  Christopher Steele: Author of the debunked dossier passed the Alfa Bank story to the State Department, which passed it along to FBI agent Peter Strzok. (Aaron Chown/PA FILE via AP)

  Two days later, a State official who previously worked under former secretary Clinton funneled the information to the FBI’s then-top Eurasia/Russia counterintelligence official, Stephen Laycock, according to recently declassified notes and testimony. Laycock, in turn, forwarded the information to Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who led the investigation of Trump and his campaign and had just weeks earlier texted a bureau lawyer, “We’ll stop [Trump from being elected].”

  “I informed Peter Strzok and another supervisor,” Laycock testified last year in a closed-door Senate hearing.

  

  Telephone: After Steele fed the Alfa Bank story to State, it was passed to the FBI’s then-top Eurasia/Russia counterintelligence official, Stephen Laycock (left), who in turn passed it on to lead FBI agent on Trump-Russia, Peter Strzok (right). Facebook/Twitter

  Steele, who later confessed he was “desperate” to defeat Trump, was the author of the debunked dossier claiming Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election. He even misspelled the name of the Russian bank as “Alpha.” Still, the FBI took his rumors seriously enough to interview tech vendors working for the Trump Organization and obtain warrants to search Trump Tower servers. Within days of receiving the State Department tip, Strzok also used Steele’s dossier to secure a wiretap on Trump adviser Carter Page.

  Clinton foreign policy adviser and current National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan would put out a written statement trumpeting the Trump-Alfa Bank story, which was shared by then-candidate Clinton on Oct. 31, 2016, after Slate reported on it. Fusion GPS, the Washington opposition-research group that worked for the Clinton campaign as a paid agent, and helped gather dirt on Alfa Bank and draft the materials Sussmann would later submit to the FBI, reportedly pressed Slate to publish the story by the account of its author, journalist Franklin Foer.

  

  The Clinton campaign played up the Trump-Alfa Bank story on the eve of the 2016 election. Twitter/@HillaryClinton

  “This was a highly sophisticated operation using enablers in both the media and federal agencies,” George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley told RealClearInvestigations.

  The Clinton campaign did not let up even after Trump won the election.

  In mid-November 2016, it enlisted top Justice Department official Bruce Ohr – whose wife, Nellie, worked for Fusion GPS – to add credibility to the Alfa rumors. That month, Ohr advised the FBI that Steele had told him that the Alfa Bank server was a link to the Trump campaign. Then in early December, Ohr met with the FBI case supervisor who worked for Strzok at least twice. Declassified notes and other records show that during those meetings, Ohr provided him with thumb drives he had received from paid Clinton opposition researcher and Fusion GPS co-founder, Glenn Simpson, and Ohr’s wife and Simpson’s colleague, Nellie. Quoting his Clinton sources, Ohr insisted the alleged backdoor computer channel between Trump and Alfa was real.

  

  Bruce Ohr: The Justice Department official — linked to Clinton opposition research firm Fusion GPS through his wife Nellie, a Fusion employee — brought the firm’s arguments and materials to the FBI. The Global Initiative

  The FBI spent months investigating the claim, eventually dismissing it as baseless. After the FBI closed the case, Sussmann turned to the nation’s top intelligence agency for assistance, as RCI first reported.

  In December 2016, Sussmann called then-CIA Director John Brennan’s general counsel – Caroline Krass – to set up a meeting to brief her about the same Alfa Bank rumors. Krass expressed interest in the tip. Then in early February 2017, officials from her office formally sat down with Sussmann for more than an hour to discuss the Trump-Russian bank rumors. Sussmann provided them updated versions of the materials he had handed off to the FBI.

  

  Caroline Krass: General counsel to then-CIA Director John Brennan welcomed Sussmann’s pitch of the Alfa Bank story, which reportedly passed from the CIA to FBI. CIA/Wikipedia

  The CIA, in turn, referred the rumors to an FBI liaison for further investigation, according to the sources briefed on his case. Strzok was the lead FBI liaison to the CIA at the time.

  Among the documents Durham has obtained is a CIA memo memorializing the meeting with Sussmann, according to the sources. In his grand jury indictment, Durham accused Sussmann of also misleading the CIA, which he referred to only as “Agency-2.” The special counsel alleges that Sussmann, as he did when meeting with an FBI official, had also failed to inform contacts at Langley that he was representing a client – in the latter case specifically Joffe – tied to the Clinton campaign operation and who had been promised a high-level job in a Clinton administration.

  Billing the Democrat’s campaign for his work on the “confidential project,” Sussmann recruited Joffe and a team of federal computer contractors to mine proprietary databases containing vast quantities of sensitive, nonpublic Internet data for possible dirt on Trump and his advisers. In a new court document filed last week, Durham revealed his team has obtained more than 80,000 pages of documents in response to grand jury subpoenas issued to more than 15 targets and witnesses, including the computer contractors. Among others receiving subpoenas: political organizations, private firms, tech companies and other entities, including a major university — Georgia Tech — which allegedly participated in the Clinton conspiracy as a Pentagon contractor. Some witnesses have been granted immunity and are cooperating with prosecutors, the sources close to the probe said.

  

  Jonathan Turley: “One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus,” says the law professor. CNN

  “While Sussmann may have hidden his work for the Clinton campaign, this was obviously a useful attack on Trump,” Turley said. “One would expect a CIA official to express reluctance in an investigation that would have a largely domestic focus. But as with the FBI, the Clinton campaign found eager officials to move on any such allegation.”

  The CIA is largely barred from collecting information inside the United States or on American citizens.

  “The CIA has no business involving itself in a domestic political issue,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton told RCI. “The evidence suggests the primary purpose of the meeting was political.”

  Fitton said his watchdog group has filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA demanding all records generated from the contacts Sussmann had with the agency in December 2016 and February 2017.

  The CIA did not return requests for comment.

  For good measure, old Clinton hands tried another pressure point. In early February 2017, Clinton’s foreign policy adviser Sullivan huddled with Fusion GPS’s Simpson and Daniel Jones, an FBI analyst-turned-Democrat-operative, to reboot the same smear campaign against Trump. (As RCI previously reported, Sullivan, who spearheaded the campaign’s effort to promote the narrative of a disturbing Trump-Russia relationship via the Alfa Bank story, is under scrutiny for possibly lying to Congress about his role in the operation.) Jones, in turn, reached out to his former colleagues at the FBI, who reopened the investigation into the old allegations of a cyber-link between Trump and Alfa Bank.

  

  Jake Sullivan played a pivotal role in the Alfa Bank story as 2016 Clinton foreign policy adviser. AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File

  The next month, acting on Jones’ recycled tip, FBI agents visited the offices of the Pennsylvania company that housed the Trump server, which was actually administered by a third-party hotel promotions firm – Cendyn, based in Florida. But their second investigation proved to be another dead end. The sinister communications Jones claimed were flowing between an alleged Trump server and Alfa Bank were found to be innocuous marketing emails. In other words, spam.

  Sources say it is odd that FBI headquarters continued to pursue the allegations, because internal FBI communications reveal that the bureau’s own cyber sleuths had pooh-poohed them within days of Sussmann’s briefing, RCI has learned.

  Strzok himself had been briefed on that assessment of the materials Sussman dropped off at headquarters on Sept. 19, 2016. In fact, in a Sept. 23, 2016, internal message to Strzok, an FBI official relayed his preliminary findings following an interview with Cendyn, the Florida marketing firm that managed the alleged Trump server.

  “Followed up this morning with Central Dynamics [Cendyn] who confirmed that the mail1.trump-email.com domain is an old domain that was set up in approximately 2009 when they were doing business with the Trump Organization that was never used,” according to the message.

  Reacting to the Durham indictment, Strzok recently tried to distance himself from the Alfa scandal, insisting in a Lawfare blog: “I had a minor role in the events in question, insofar as I transferred the material Sussman gave to Jim Baker, the FBI’s general counsel at the time, to the personnel who ultimately supervised and looked into the allegations.”

  Echoing other critics, Strzok complained that Durham – who originally was tapped to investigate the origins of the Russia “collusion” investigation by Trump’s Attorney General Bill Barr – is conducting a partisan witch hunt on behalf of Trump.

  Strzok’s claims notwithstanding, Barr’s successor, the President Biden-nominated Attorney General Merrick Garland, testified last week that he has renewed funding and staffing for Durham’s far-reaching investigation for the next fiscal year. “[Y]ou can readily assume his budget has been approved,” Garland assured Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 23:30

• Russian Woman, Boyfriend Sentenced To 10 Months In Prison For Simulating Oral Sex Outside Church
  Russian Woman, Boyfriend Sentenced To 10 Months In Prison For Simulating Oral Sex Outside Church

  Following the fall of the Soviet Union and the disastrous reign of Boris Yeltsen, President Vladimir Putin has sought to restore Russian national pride in a number of ways, including elevating the Russian Orthodox Church to its pre-Soviet glory. This veneration has at the times taken the form of legal crackdowns: the Russians stamped out non-orthodox Christian groups like the Jehovas Witnesses. And when the members of feminist group Pussy Riot staged their “punk prayer” at Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Savior, they were arrested and sentenced to sentences as long as 7 years in a brutal Russian prison.

  But in the latest example of how Russian authorities handle any gesture of disrespect toward the Russian orthodox church, a Tajik man and his Russian girlfriend were sentenced to 10 months behind bars after a raunchy photoshoot in front of St. Basil’s Cathedral – one of the country’s most sacred religious monuments – which featured the Russian woman simulating oral sex to her boyfriend from a very suggestive angle.

  Here’s more from RT:

  Ruslan Bobiev (whose real name is Ruslani Murojonzod) and Asya Akimova (Anastasia Chistova) published photos on social media taken by the iconic Red Square cathedral. The most controversial snap saw Akimova on her knees, simulating oral sex while wearing a police jacket.

  The photo, shown below, was taken from the Telegram app:

  

  The lovers were later arrested and accused of breaking a law that seeks to punish those who commit actions “with the purpose of insulting the religious feelings of believers.”

  The 10-month sentence is exactly the length of time requested by the Russian prosecutors.

  

  Bobiev and Akimova are the first to receive time behind bars under this law, with all those previously convicted being given a fine or suspended sentence.

  Bobiev’s isn’t the only high-profile case of attractive women using their bodies to disrespect Orthodox Churches in recent weeks. Earlier this month, a video showing a Russian OnlyFans star went viral after she was filmed flashing her breasts near the exact same church.

  The model, known as Lola Bunny, later apologized in response to an outpouring of online outrage and anger. She still faces the prospect of prosecution.

  The law against insulting believers was passed back in 2013 following the “Pussy Riot” incident. The law made headlines again in 2016 when a Russian YouTuber was caught playing Pokemon Go in a church.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 23:00

• Unvaxx'd San Francisco Police "Discarded Like A Piece Of Trash": Officer
  Unvaxx’d San Francisco Police “Discarded Like A Piece Of Trash”: Officer

  Authored by Ilene Eng via The Epoch Times,

  Several dozen San Francisco police officers who are not vaccinated against COVID-19 have been placed on leave, a police union leader told NTD Television.

  Tony Montoya, president of the San Francisco Police Officers Association, told NTD that there are 41 unvaccinated officers on paid administrative leave. Another 40 are on disability or Family and Medical leave and have yet to report their vaccination status.

  San Francisco previously allowed its city employees to submit exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine. They were approved.

  Later, however, the Department of Public Health issued a health order requiring all city employees to be vaccinated by Oct. 13 or be relieved of their duties.

  “DHR [Department of Human Resources] kind of bungled the situation from the onset, where they gave very strict timelines on when things were due,” Montoya said.

  “My members followed those guidelines, whether it was submitting an application [or] requesting an exemption. And the city has just thrown rules to the wind, and it just really made my members distrustful. It completely lacks transparency, and the members are like, ‘What rules are we supposed to follow?’ Because it’s really unclear what the rules are at this stage.”

  NTD reached out to the DHR but did not receive a response by the deadline.

  “For some reason we were told they would go under a secondary review process and then we had to answer some additional questions, submit those by a deadline,” Alicia Worthington, a sergeant at the San Francisco Police Department, told NTD.

  “We received paperwork that stated that our exemptions were now denied.”

  Worthington was born and raised in San Francisco, and she said this is her 20th year with the San Francisco Police Department.

  “It’s been really rough for all of us. I’ve been in contact with my colleagues who were impacted by the mandates and who are on leave, and we’re going through a lot of stress, a lot of heartache. We worked tirelessly through the pandemic. And just to undergo a complete 180, and to be yanked from duty and put on leave, is pretty heartbreaking,” Worthington said.

  “You’re just discarded like a piece of trash.”

  

  Officer Rebecca Schiff with her father. (Courtesy of Rebecca Schiff)

  Rebecca Schiff, an officer of three years at the San Francisco Police Department, told NTD that some of the questions were combative.

  “I’m a Roman Catholic. They asked questions like, well, the Pope was for the vaccines, so what makes you so different?” Schiff said.

  “Very abrasive questioning like that, about our religious beliefs.”

  They are not allowed to work or volunteer during this time, despite the department’s lack of resources. Montoya said it had to restructure during the last month to compensate those on paid leave.

  “They were pulling officers from admin positions, so people who had been doing paperwork for the last 20 years are now being pulled out to go on the street, which they have been doing prior to terminating us because they just don’t have enough people on the streets,” Schiff said.

  “They took trainers from the academy and put them back on the street. And then they hired retired people to come into the academy to make up for the training that they otherwise don’t have.”

  Schiff does not think the new trainees will get the same training she did.

  Her now-retired father, brother, and significant other are also officers.

  “I’m never not going to be a police officer. It’s how I was raised, it’s how I see myself,” Schiff said.

  “You could put a crowd of people who all look exactly the same, and the only thing that’s different about the majority of us who do this work is that when something happens, everybody else ducks and runs; we’re running towards the danger.”

  “The department is going through kind of an administrative hearing right now to make a determination whether or not those members will be put on unpaid leave status after 30 days,” Montoya said.

  They are requesting that the city rethink its position and present options other than vaccination.

  “It’s a personal choice. But for the department to just have that kind of hard line … it really doesn’t show collaboration between the union and the city,” Montoya said. “They’ve just taken this one-size-fits-all approach, and it’ll be up to individual members to [decide] whether they want to seek any type of injunctive relief through the legal system.”

  Montoya said the department is already short 400 officers and this mandate is adding to their deficit.

  Some of the police on leave are eligible for retirement. Some are considering employment elsewhere.

  “San Francisco is always going to be my home, even if I end up somewhere else, out of state. I took great pride. I still have a lot of pride in my profession, what I did in my years of service,” Worthington said.

  “I’ve had some wonderful times, some great cases, things I can look back on, knowing that I really made a difference and I was impactful in what I did in serving my community.”

  As of Oct. 5, San Francisco has 2,117 sworn police officers.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 22:30

• The Most Popular Halloween Costumes Of 2021
  The Most Popular Halloween Costumes Of 2021

  Halloween – it’s the time of year when kids and adults alike dress up, eat candy, and show off their spookiest selves. It’s also when the scariest home decorations are the talk of the town, and people are frightened left, right, and center.

  With the help of data from Google Trends and their unique Frightgeist series, Visual Capitalist’s Anshool Deshmukh visualized the most searched Halloween costumes in the U.S. in 2021.

  From spooky to sweet, these are the costumes everyone wants to dress up as this Halloween.

  

  A Brief History of Halloween

  Halloween is celebrated each year on October 31, with this year’s Halloween occurring on a Sunday. The tradition originated with the ancient Celtic festival of Samhain, where people would light bonfires and wear costumes to ward off ghosts.

  The concept of Halloween didn’t gain popularity until it reached the United States. Borrowing from European traditions, Americans began to dress up in costumes and go house to house asking for food or money, a practice that eventually became today’s “trick-or-treat” tradition.

  Other superstitions also started to form around the holiday. Young women believed they could divine the appearance of their future husbands by doing tricks with apple parings or mirrors.

  Over time, Halloween moved away from focusing on witchcraft and ghosts to the festival we know and love today—a day focused on games, foods of the season, and festive costumes.

  What Are the Most Popular Halloween Costumes?

  With COVID-19 cases down compared to last year and Americans expected to spend over $10 billion on Halloween this year, much of the United States will be partaking in celebrating the spooky holiday.

  From classy costumes and last-minute DIYs to pop-culture outfits and even era-inspired costumes, here are the top 10 most popular Halloween costumes in the U.S. in 2021.

  

   

  Notable Trending Costumes

  The Netflix show Squid Game has had a meteoric rise in popularity in recent weeks, becoming one of the most-watched shows on the streaming platform—just in time for Halloween.

  Squid Game costumes are the 23rd most popular in Google’s search, and they continue to trend high, being the most searched costume idea in Detroit.

  In 2020, the mobile game Among Us was the talk of the gaming world, and this year it is the 16th most popular costume, with its popularity spiking in Jacksonville, Florida.

  Other notable costumes in the top 50 include Pokémon at #50, Fortnite at #44, Velma Dinkley (of Scooby-Doo fame) at #42, Poison Ivy (the comic book villain) at #33, Beetlejuice at #24 and the entire 1980s decade at #18.

  Most Popular Halloween Costumes by State

  When it comes to festivals, every state has its unique perspective and traditions on celebrating them. This extends to popular Halloween costumes too.

  Though there might be some overlap, digging deeper into the most popular costumes in every state allows us a unique look into how diverse people’s tastes are across the country.

  Here is a breakdown of the most popular costumes in the U.S. in 2020 by state:

  

   

  A look at popular costumes at the state level reveals some interesting quirks. Montana, for example, is uniquely interested in The Purge, and Rhode Island trick-or-treaters are big fans of Hermione Granger of Harry Potter fame.

  Traditions are Here To Stay

  At its core, Halloween still remains that same old fright-inducing festival it has always been.

  Even though pop culture might influence your Halloween choices, traditional costumes will always have a unique place in everyone’s heart.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 22:00

• Over 11,000 Active-Duty Air Force Personnel Unvaccinated With Days Left Before Deadline
  Over 11,000 Active-Duty Air Force Personnel Unvaccinated With Days Left Before Deadline

  By Zachary Stieber of The Epoch Times

  

  The Air Force could lose thousands of troops in the coming weeks as over 11,000 active-duty personnel remain without a COVID-19 vaccine, just days before the deadline to get one.

  Some 96.4% of active-duty airmen were partially or fully vaccinated as of Oct. 25, the branch said in its latest vaccination update. That means approximately 11,462 airmen have not begun a vaccination program before the Nov. 2 deadline to become fully vaccinated.

  Another nearly 12,000 reserve personnel or Space Force members remain unvaccinated, according to data released by the Air Force. Reserves have until Dec. 2 to become fully vaccinated. Fully vaccinated means getting a vaccination regimen and then at least two weeks elapsing. Members who haven’t yet started a program cannot come into compliance with the mandate.

  “We don’t anticipate we will be to a 100 percent vaccination rate,” an Air Force spokeswoman told Defense One this week.

  Any troops who don’t get a vaccine by the deadline and have not received or is not in the process of seeking a religious or medical exemption will be deemed in violation of a lawful order and subject to discipline under Article 92 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. They could be court-martialed or face other disciplinary measures.

  The mandate stems from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s order in late August for all troops to get a vaccine unless they receive an exemption.

  Each branch head decided separately on mandate details, including deadlines. The Air Force has the earliest deadlines for active-duty troops and reserves. An Air Force spokesperson told The Epoch Times earlier this month that the deadlines would not be pushed back.

  Hundreds of thousands of troops across the military weren’t vaccinated in the middle of October. As of Oct. 27, over 381,000 troops remain unvaccinated, according to an analysis of Pentagon data. The vast majority, or nearly 320,000, are in the Army, the Army reserve, or the Army National Guard.

  Army reserves have the most lenient deadline, by far. They have until June 30, 2022, to become fully vaccinated. Active-duty sailors and Marines have until Nov. 28, while active-duty soldiers have until Dec. 15.

  It remains unclear how many religious and medical exemptions have been approved. The Pentagon previously referred requests for numbers to each branch. The Army didn’t respond to a query and the Navy declined to comment. The Marines said it had not started approving any religious accommodation requests while declining to speak about medical exemptions. The Air Force told The Epoch Times earlier this month it is not tracking exemption requests and therefore could not say how many were approved, if any.

  The Air Force told news outlets this week it would start releasing approved exemption numbers after the deadline.

  Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Wednesday declined to directly address complaints from some sailors who said that leaders told them their religious exemption applications were going to be denied.

  “I don’t have any direct knowledge of a situation where a member of the military was told by his or her leadership, ‘hey, go ahead and apply, but you’re going to get denied,’” he told reporters in Washington. “I go back to what the secretary expects, that there is there’s an exemption policy been in place well, before the COVID vaccine, so it’s not new. And his expectation is that if members of the military want to apply for one that they should be able to. And they should be able to make their case. And the leadership should follow the same process for that exemption request as they would for any other.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 21:30

• Venezuelans Turn To Gold Nuggets As The Local Currency Implodes
  Venezuelans Turn To Gold Nuggets As The Local Currency Implodes

  By Joseph T. Salerno of Mises Institute

  

  The Venezuelan government recently lopped off six zeros from its hyperinflating currency, the bolivar. The highest denomination currency note of 1 million bolivars, worth less than $0.25, was replaced by a one-bolivar note. At the same time, a 100-bolivar note, worth about $25.00, was introduced as the new highest denomination of the bolivar. The currency conversion was designed  to spare the government the embarrassment of having to issue a 100-million bolivar note to enable people to purchases everyday items without having to carry around bundles of notes, given that the price of a loaf of bread had risen to 7 million old bolivars. Of course, the arbitrary scaling down of the denomination of the currency will not slow inflation, because the new currency notes can be printed just as cheaply as the old. The bolivar has already lost 73 percent of its value in 2021 alone and the IMF estimates the annual inflation rate will reach 5,500 percent by the end of 2021.

  It is not surprising, then, that all but the poorest Venezuelans have abandoned the bolivar as a medium of exchange, let alone a store of value or unit of account. US dollars are the exchange medium of choice in Caracas and other large cities, while the Colombian peso dominates along the Colombian border, particularly in the regional city of San Cristobal. The Brazilian real is current along the southern border with Brazil and the euro and cryptocurrencies have also found niche uses.

  What is wonderfully surprising is the spontaneous emergence of a pure gold currency in a remote region of southeastern Venezuela around the towns of Tumeremo and El Callao. The region abounds with precious metal ores and has a long history of luring prospectors and miners seeking their fortunes. Today, however, many of the larger mines are controlled by the government military, which is battling local gangs and guerillas. Despite the violence and lawlessness, jobless Venezuelans from far and wide are flooding into the area to work in thriving illegal mines in exchange for payment in gold nuggets. As a result, gold flakes, which are peeled off raw nuggets with hand tools, have become the currency of choice in the region with prices for commodities and services quoted in grams of gold. Half a gold gram buys you a one-night stay in a local hotel, while a meal for two at a Chinese restaurant and a haircut will cost you a quarter of a gram and an eighth of a gram, respectively.

  The gold flakes are carried in people’s pockets—usually wrapped in the nearly worthless bolivar notes. While some shops are equipped with scales to weigh the gold flakes, most sellers and their customers have become so familiar with the flakes that they evaluate them by sight. For example, the barber and his customer who transacted for the haircut agreed that three gold flakes equaled the one-eighth gram price (approximately $5.00). Gold is also starting to penetrate the nearby cities, such as the regional capital Ciudad Bolivar, as stores in shopping malls gladly accept the gold in exchange for dollars from miners who are seeking to cash out.

  For gold to become a full-blown currency that can viably compete with depreciating dollars and other foreign currencies, the raw nuggets need to be minted into convenient shapes and sizes and their weight and fineness certified by reputable firms. This means that any legal barriers to private mints must be eliminated. In addition, sales and capital gains taxes on gold must be abolished. Since it is highly unlikely that these measures will be implemented by the Maduro government, we can only cheer on the inroads made by the people’s gold flake currency. 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 21:00

• Prince Andrew Accuses Virginia Giuffre Of Procuring 'Slutty Underage Girls' For Epstein
  Prince Andrew Accuses Virginia Giuffre Of Procuring ‘Slutty Underage Girls’ For Epstein

  Alleged Royal pedophile Prince Andrew is looking to turn the tables on his accuser, Virginia Giuffre, who he says was involved in the “wilful recruitment and trafficking of young girls for sexual abuse,” according to the Sunday Times, citing a late Friday court filing.

  

  In a controversial attempt to prove his innocence, lawyers for the Duke of York have painted Virginia Giuffre as an alleged criminal who worked to procure underage “slutty girls” for Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile billionaire.

  They also indicate that by making false allegations against the prince and using up court time, Giuffre is allowing real predators to get away with their crimes. -Sunday Times

  The Prince’s new legal strategy is quite the shift from claiming ignorance to his good friend Jeffrey Epstein’s pedophile lifestyle, and risks “victim-blaming” by supporters of Giuffre – who has accused him in a civil lawsuit in New York of “rape in the first degree” and three instances of sexual assault when she was 17.

  Giuffre, 38, claims the attacks took place in 2001 in London, New York, and on Pedo Island (Little St. James), owned by Epstein at the time. She seeks “punitive damages” that could end up being millions of pounds.

  The late Friday filing by the 61-year-old royal includes a section titled “Giuffre’s role in Epstein’s criminal enterprise,” and alleges that she was involved in procuring minors for Epstein – who was found dead in a Manhattan jail cell in 2019 while awaiting trial for sex trafficking underage girls.

  Andrew’s filing quotes the sister of one of Giuffre’s ex-boyfriends, who claims Giuffre (then Virginia Roberts) asked her for help to recruit minors.

  “She [Giuffre] would say to me, ‘Do you know any girls who are kind of slutty?’” she claims.

  How it started. How it’s going pic.twitter.com/j2EVHQj0jf

  — Ben Rometsch (@benjarom3) October 30, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  “It is a striking feature of this case that while lurid allegations are made against Prince Andrew by Giuffre, the only party to this claim whose conduct has involved the wilful recruitment and trafficking of young girls for sexual abuse is Giuffre herself, including while she was an adult,” the filing continues.

  The prince’s US-based lawyer, Andrew Brettler, also points out that Giuffre has profited from her allegations involving Epstein over a number of years and is now set on gaining “another payday” at the prince’s expense.

  Brettler suggests that Giuffre’s modus operandi may allow genuine paedophiles to escape justice. -Sunday Times

  “Giuffre’s pattern of filing a series of lawsuits against numerous high-profile individuals should no longer be tolerated, as it continues to irreparably harm many innocent people and diverts already limited judicial resources from the adjudication of meritorious claims asserted against those who have actually perpetrated sexual offences against minors,” reads the filing.

  Giuffre’s lawyer hits back

  In a Saturday statement, Giuffre’s lawyer, Sigrid McCawley said “If Virginia Giuffre had stood silent in the face of outrageous statements like those Prince Andrew routinely churns out — his motion to dismiss the litigation being no exception — the decades-long sex-trafficking ring his friend Jeffrey Epstein operated and he participated in would have never been exposed.

  “On the subject of money, let’s be clear: the only party to this litigation using money to his benefit is Prince Andrew.”

  McCawley also told Telegraph Magazine that Andrew’s infamous interview with BBC‘s “Newsnight” in 2019 “was very helpful for us.”

  The prince argued at the time that Giuffre’s claims that she was forced to sleep with him at the Belgravia home of Ghislaine Maxwell in March 2001 could not be true because he had been collecting his daughter, Princess Beatrice, from a children’s party at a branch of Pizza Express in Woking.

  McCawley revealed that Beatrice and Sarah, Duchess of York, Andrew’s ex-wife, could be forced to give evidence about the alibi if Giuffre’s lawsuit goes to trial next year.

  The Prince’s legal team has argued that a private 2009 settlement between Giuffre and Epstein protects him from liability.

  On Wednesday, the a pre-trial hearing will take place before a New York judge in what is expected to be several months of litigation.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 20:30

• Biden Admin Fails To Enforce Trump's Phase One Trade Deal With China
  Biden Admin Fails To Enforce Trump’s Phase One Trade Deal With China

  The Biden administration has failed to enforce the U.S.-China phase one trade agreement. There are serious concerns about the enforcement mechanism of the deal as China’s purchases fall behind targets. 

  In the trade deal signed in January 2020, Beijing promised to purchase about $200 billion of US goods and services over 2020, 2021 compared with 2017 levels. We’ve noted on multiple occasions how China was never going to live up to the deal, and nearly two years later, it still hasn’t. 

  Top Biden officials have tried to reassure that the deal is still intact and said the administration would hold China accountable. 

  Through September 2021, trade data from Peterson Institute for International Economics shows China only purchased 62% of the US goods expected at this point for the deal covering 2021. Put differently, China is about $121 billion behind its expected purchases for the year. 

  

  In every category, China falls behind in commitments. 

  

  Bloomberg recently spoke with a soybean farmer and head of DC Analytics in Illinois, Dan Cekander, who said: 

  “China isn’t buying as aggressively as anticipated at all.

  “They really need to step it up.”

  From the agreement’s early days, about six days after the deal was signed, we told readers the deal was “doomed from the start.” Since then, China has never been on pace to meet purchase commitments. And for the Biden administration to tout that they will enforce the deal is just malarkey. 

  Presumably, Biden’s “build back better” agenda does not rely on exports?

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 20:00

• Bitcoin: A Second Chance For The Muslim World?
  Bitcoin: A Second Chance For The Muslim World?

  Authored by Asif Shiraz via BitcoinMagazine.com,

  Bitcoin is the sound money that the Muslim world needs to accelerate into the future…

  

  The Ottoman suppression of the printing press is a poster child case of intellectual stagnation in the Muslim world. Although there was no outright ban, there is no denying of a massively missed opportunity here: A civilization’s failure to adopt a groundbreaking technological change happening right next door. In its golden age, this same civilization that gave the world universities and hospitals, optics and algebra, even a precursor to the printing press itself, got so left behind in the later acceptance of technology, that its very own holy book, the Quran, waited for its first mass publication almost 300 years after Johannes Gutenberg chugged out the printed Bible.

  THE DECLINE

  But Islam’s Genesis Block was entirely different in character: A spirited but sundry assemblage of women and men whose most remarkable trait was their openness to new ideas. The idea of one God in a multitude of divine contenders. The idea of one bitcoin in a multitude of shitcoins … oops… sorry… mixing up my chronology! So anyway, this fraternity of early Islam, along with its keen aspiration of ushering in a just social and economic order, is also remarkable in a novel way for its time: It represents a death cross of reason’s moving average overtaking that of intuition in religious history. Bringing intellectual inquiry at par with mystical experience, it paved the way for its scions to delve into scientific skepticism, empiricism and experimental inquiry, with Robert Briffault going so far as to say that “Roger Bacon was no more than one of the apostles of Muslim science and method.”

  But eventually, the music stopped, and the market corrected! There are many explanations for the downfall, most of them partially true, spanning decades and centuries, but if we want to point fingers, as human nature dictates, at some symbolic event, then it must be the Mongol destruction of the House of Wisdom, #SackOfBaghdad. In the age of manuscripts, so many books from Baghdad’s libraries were flung into the Tigris that a horse could walk across on them and the river ran black with scholars’ ink and red with the blood of martyrs.

  As the Muslim Ummah lost so many intellectuals and intellectual capital in this tumultuous period, its reaction has been, (understandably), like that of an intern finding herself in control of mission critical servers, where all the senior sys admins suddenly stepped down, died or disappeared. Your best reaction is this: I’m not touching this system, and the only commands I’ll ever execute are those handed down by the four illustrious system admins — founders of the established schools of jurisprudence.

  And so Islamic scholarship for hundreds of years has been in a maintenance mode. In Pakistan alone, over 12,000 Madrasa routinely teach the rules and regulations of exchanging gold and silver, centuries after its daily use has been replaced by fiat.

  SURVIVAL OF CORE TENETS

  But herein lies a wonderful irony. This code-freeze on innovation, which we otherwise disapprove of, did work to an extent as it was intended: It protected the core principles from being callously compromised or deliberately diluted in the hands of opportunists. Just like the extra caution and consensus in changing the U.S. constitution protected the principles of freedom and equality enshrined in it: Islamic law, too, enshrined core financial principles, that have been a thorn on the side of would-be reformers attempting to legalize fiat and modern banking in the name of Islamic Finance. The 12,000 semi-literate Madrasa students, parroting the provisions of the fair exchange of gold and silver from a 17th century syllabus citing a 9th century scholar, unwittingly become more correct than a Harvard doctorate in finance indoctrinated in the misguided larceny of fiat money! All because Muhammad ﷺ mandated sound money, just like Mises and Hayek after him, a tenet immutably crystallized in Fiqh — Islamic Jurisprudence.

  A business man himself, the Prophet of Islam possessed a sharp acumen for economics and finance. In modern parlance, he quickly rose the corporate ladder to become one of the youngest CEOs of his time tasked with turning around the failing business empire of the urbane female entrepreneur, Khadija. Impressed with the Prophet’s personality, Khadija quickly proposed to him, creating a power couple that changed the course of history.

  Just like Jesus turned out the money-lenders from the Second Temple, the Prophet of Islam, too, had a disdain for usury and outlawed most of the accompanying capitalist machinations, that contribute to the gross wealth disparities like 10% owning 76% of the assets. So he created some fundamental rules that constitute the bedrock of Islamic financial principles:

  1. Forbade usury (Riba), including interest. Still respecting the time value of money, the prohibition’s intent is to create a financial regime where profit and risk is shared between the entrepreneur and the investor. From a sound money perspective, it prohibits the core operation of issuing interest bearing bonds and T-Bills against which the central bank can inflate the money supply.

  2. Forbade uncertainty (Gharar), embodied in his famous quote, “Do not sell a fish which is still in the water.” Eliminates the possibility of fractional reserve, since outstanding debt cannot be monetized and traded further with, unless it’s paid. It also closes the tap on a myriad of derivative instruments that further inflate the money supply.

  3. Forbade speculation (Maisir), which includes outright gambling. Some scholars consider speculative market activity, like the Dogecoin phenomena, under the ambit of this ruling.

  4. Mandated sound money. The rules of obligatory charity tax in Islam are denominated in sound money. Muslim governments take the market price of gold, convert them to fiat prices, and announce the converted value to the public to pay the religious obligation of Zakat. But from a legal standpoint, it permanently establishes gold and silver (as well as a whole class of other products) as perpetual, religiously recognized money in Islam.

  These prohibitions are strong enough in Islamic theology that anyone who violates them is technically, “at war with Allah and his Prophet.” Which is why the Madrasa’s syllabus clings to “nature’s money” (Thaman-e-Khalqi): gold and silver.

  But of course, big governments, Muslim or otherwise, are a chip off the same block: Self-interest reigns supreme over ethical principles. In Pakistan alone, the religious case against fiat banking has been delayed and obstructed for over 40 years in the courts. The politics of deficit financing are so attractive that no one wants to surrender this magical money making wand. Voldemorts, all of them!

  In spite of these prohibitions, and in countries where religion dominates social values, Muslims still grew comfortable with paper money because it initially disguised itself as “warehouse receipts for gold” which duped the scholars into permitting it, but the jurisprudence failed to catch up with the subsequent thinning of this asset backing into its current meaningless extent.

  REFORM ATTEMPTS

  As the domino roll of national independences took place, four different threads of activity around banking spread in Muslim countries.

  1. First, the mainstream implementation of modern banking took root in every Muslim State, implemented in toto like its Western counterparts.

  2. Second, Islamic banking attempted to reshape things a little. Scholars familiar with both economics and Shariah attempted to “Islamize” banking via the new academic discipline of “Islamic finance.” But instead of faithfully creating platforms for risk-sharing and equity-based financing, it just followed the Medieval Triple Contract–like approach to practically clone existing financial products, accompanied by a plethora of research papers to justify it. Like a comedic quote from the cold war era, “Communism is the longest and most painful road from capitalism to capitalism,” contemporary Islamic finance, too, turned out to become the most painful and circuitous route from traditional banking to traditional banking, decorated with Arabic names! How the professional bankers duped these scholars and hijacked this effort is excellently explained by Harris Irfan in a podcast with our own Saifedean Ammous.

  3. Third, a large but silent majority of toothless Islamic scholars continues to exist who view all forms of banking with suspicion, but the growing chasm of knowledge gap between their education and the complexities of modern finance makes them unable to take back the narrative.

  4. Lastly, a much smaller band of Islamic scholars exist, like followers of the Sufi order of a British convert and his Basque disciple, as well as a scholar from Trinidad, who successfully identified the fundamental problem with modern banking from a Shariah perspective: its monetary foundation. You cannot “Islamize” a bank if you do not fix the money it operates on! Hence, their attempt to resuscitate the traditional Islamic gold dinar as a sound money alternative to fiat.

  GOLD DINAR: THE REAL ISLAMIC ALTERNATIVE

  Fiat money and its permissibility can be viewed through an important concept in Islamic theology, the Maqasid-e-Shariah: the goals or purpose of Shariah law. To illustrate this with a controversial example, consider a Shariah law which says you cannot punish a man or woman for adultery, unless you bring four eye witnesses to the sexual act (which is normally impossible). While Islam abhors adultery, the Maqasid is an attempt by scholars to understand why, instead of having a law that easily and swiftly punishes it, there exists one that makes it practically impossible to prosecute. They rationalized that it must be to shield people’s privacy and one-off slipups from society’s nosy interference and appetite for punishment. According to Muhammad Asad, “… to make proof of adultery dependent on a voluntary, faith-inspired confession of the guilty parties themselves.” So the Maqasid points to some socially valuable goal that the law intends to achieve.

  The rationale of the financial laws of Shariah are similarly explained in terms of their goals: a just distribution of wealth, a money free from devaluation, a business contract free from usurious exploitation, and a regulatory regime that increases people’s wealth and well-being. Through a very elementary intuition, it is obvious that fiat currencies violate this principle of honesty and justice in the society: Money issuers steal the purchasing power of the people and devalue their money. To put a formal Quranic stamp to this reasoning, we can take verse 3:75, “There are some among the People of the Book (Jews and Christians) who, if entrusted with a stack of gold, will readily return it.” The modern Islamic bank, if entrusted with money equivalent to a stack of gold, returns you only 90% of its worth in purchasing power, owing to inflationary erosion, thus it’s part of a system that clearly violates the Maqasid.

  Islamic banks have thus thoroughly failed to espouse the core principle of risk sharing and eliminating interest (since interest exists in the very issuance process of the money they are built on). The only real Islamic alternative ever proposed was the Gold Dinar Movement. Starting in parallel (and in many respects earlier) than Islamic banking, (with the first modern Dinar minted in 1992), it was incisively accurate in its assessment and proposed remedy to the money problem: “The Return to the Gold Dinar.” This was an earlier time, when the golden tool in the fight against fiat was literally gold, which was then popularized by Austrian economics, advocated by upright leaders like Ron Paul, and adopted by grassroots activists like Bernard von NotHaus. The Muslim world saw its own spate of activism for sound money, led by its most vocal proponent, Umar Vadillo, and associated initiatives like Wakala Nusantara, Dinar First and my own Dinar Wakala. The Kelantan State government’s launch of Gold Dinar was our own El Zonte moment, full of euphoria and promise that made waves globally. The passion and courage of this vibrant lot of Warrior Sufis represented the best of modern-day Muslims: Profoundly knowledgeable people, engaged in grassroots activism, to fix the most pressing challenges of the contemporary world.

  However, the primary strength of gold, its physical indestructibility, came in the way of its adoption: Logistic and regulatory hindrances prevented free flow of physical gold coins across national boundaries. In the words of its founder, Shaykh Abdalqadir, “The defense mechanisms of today’s late capitalism and its crisis management surrounding the buying, moving and minting of gold have surrounded it with prohibitive pricing and taxation.” It continues to serve as a galvanizing symbol of the fight against Riba, but making it a practical inflationary hedge, or a broader Ummah-level movement for sound money, proved an elusive goal.

  Without the Gold Dinar, the horizon seemed all but bleak, except that a glimmer of hope came from the most unexpected of places: Where scholars, economists and revolutionaries had failed, nerds succeeded!

  Enter Emir Satoshi!

  ADVENT OF BITCOIN

  For us in the Gold Dinar Movement, Bitcoiners are our brothers in arms: fighting the same enemy, securing the same goal. This is what I have always advocated to my fellow activists in the dinar movement, from as far back as 2012.

  Our Prophetﷺ, as well as the Rashidun Caliphs, never debased money, nor profited from seigniorage, but gave us the right to choose our own mediums of exchange. This is fundamentally antithetical to the monstrosity of legal tender laws, which Islamic scholars have been duped into legitimizing under various pretexts (highlighting the need for increased financial literacy in this lot). This freedom to choose a currency constitutes the common ground that both us and the Bitcoiners can rally around together.

  “The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust,” writes Satoshi. He recognized the problem with fiat and set out to fix it with Bitcoin, a miraculous epiphany that has let loose this growing, global band of fervid, somewhat bumptious Maximalists, as similar in essence and ethos to us, as they look different in appearance. I see Bitcoiners, not only in their pluck and guile, but also in the sly ingenuity of their weapon of choice, as nothing less than a modern-day David taking on the Goliath of traditional banking!

  From a Muslim perspective, the operating verse of the Quran in critique of the Bitcoin movement becomes 49:13, “O mankind, indeed We have created you from male and female and made you peoples and tribes that you may know one another. Indeed, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous of you. Indeed, Allah is Knowing and Aware.” In the realm of monetary matters, the most righteous and noble are those who support sound money. It is appropriate that Allah stresses his own divine attributes in the verse, as a warning that our religiously colored conception of righteousness may not necessarily be the same as that of the knowing, the aware. (The literal term Taqwa, means something that protects you from the wrath of God.) And to the best of my belief, protecting and uplifting the poor, the downtrodden from the entrapments of a prejudiced financial system is surely a winner with the God of Abraham!

  A SECOND CHANCE

  We Muslims had set out to establish a just and fair society, and for some time, to quote David Graeber, succeeded: “Once freed from its ancient scourges of debt and slavery, the local bazaar had become, for most, not a place of moral danger, but the very opposite: the highest expression of the human freedom and communal solidarity, and thus to be protected assiduously from state intrusion.” But gradually, as our political and intellectual leadership in the world waned, we now find ourselves economically bankrupt, submerged in a rigged financial system, and enslaved to the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

  A major reason for this impoverishment was the widening gap of modern knowledge. The following vicious cycle of three circularly dependent factors is another way of modeling our current reality:

  1. Low capital allocation for education. A generally weak economy leaves little allocation for investment in education of both scientific and humanities disciplines, which is required for a productive human capital.

  2. Low human capital. The first factor results in low quality of education in the populace then manifests politically in bad national decisions, engagement in conflicts, economic mismanagement, acquisition of debt and failure to curb corruption. Economically, this unskilled workforce has low productivity, scarce entrepreneurship and ineffective technology adoption. Religiously, it permits violence and extremism to breed along sectarian fault lines.

  3. Low economic output. The second factor results in continued economic tribulations, since the whole society is now in KTLO mode, instead of “adding new features.” Which leads us again to item one.

  It is the standard cycle of poverty played out at a macro scale, which many competing power bases believe they can break. The military, the Mullahs, and the Liberals, far away, even the CIA has prescriptions on how to solve our problems. But such temporary political and economic interventions bear no lasting results, since nations are built by worthy men and women, over a span of many years, who, given a free and peaceful environment, fall back on their innate drive for excellence to create a better world.

  It is the job of the revolutionary and his meteoric jolt, or at a smaller scale, your social entrepreneur giving a small push, that breaks a segment of society free from this vicious cycle: A closed ecosystem of wealth circulation, comprising of learned individuals, equipped with better technology and empowered with more capital, shielded from outside influence, and stabilized by a fair social contract, to launch the virtuous symbiosis of economic prosperity and human development which prop each other to newer heights.

  This break can start in many ways: a national independence, some strong leadership, or in case of Islam, the founding of a new religion. Islam’s own trajectory gives us a generalized three-stage pattern on which any revolution can be modeled, an excellent blueprint for our bitcoin adoption.

  1. Education: A new world view is conceived, and people are educated toward it for voluntarily placing their faith on it — Iman.

  2. Separation: The model is physically deployed, separated from existing systems, so it can grow and thrive without any negative external influences — Hijra.

  3. Protection: When the model grows strong enough to threaten the status quo, but still weak enough to be fully destructible, it needs protection, usually requiring armed conflict — Jihad.

  We in the Gold Dinar Movement believed that the break in this vicious cycle will come from financial empowerment: When Muslim people and governments adopt sound money, free from the shackles of the IMF, it will allow our bankrupt economies to manage enough disposable income that can be invested in other avenues in society, putting us on a path to progress and human development. Gold would bring back the Golden Age, producing men and women who are worth their weight in gold!

  But it could not. Let me explain why, and how bitcoin makes it possible.

  BITCOIN: A TOOL FOR REVOLUTION

  Following our three-stage model of a revolution, let’s review how bitcoin resolves the challenges of each step.

  1. Education

  The common man, humble about his knowledge of finance, expects, like John Galbraith remarked, a “deeper mystery to the process of money creation.” But which really is so simple, he goes on, that “the mind is repelled.”

  But the chasm in traditional and modern education keeps our scholars from being able to religiously evaluate the fiat system, for which they need three vital credentials: a traditional Mufti qualification, specialized research in the Fiqh of Muamalat, and a study of modern economics. Only a handful achieve this, like the globally revered Usmani, who become thought leaders in Islamic finance: The rest take the easy way out and follow what they posit. I once asked a certified Shariah advisor on LinkedIn, if he knew what fractional reserve banking meant. I expected some abstruse, rule-bending justification for it but was taken aback by his honest admission that he simply didn’t know what it was!

  So the first challenge was to educate both the people and the scholars about the fiat system. Then to enlist serious academic and industry practitioners to devise a working alternative based on gold and silver. Then to have its demand trickle down into the masses to eventually morph into enough political pressure for the government to adopt it, much to its own detriment. Highly unlikely.

  Except that with bitcoin, educating the people now becomes much more focused and result oriented. The wider goal of educating people about finance and economics remains indispensable in both gold and Bitcoin-based sound money solutions. But with bitcoin, we don’t have to wait for a third-world academia and archaic-minded scholars to sell the solution to an unwilling government: We take the narrative, and the prerogative of action, back from them. We go tactical, orange pill the masses with an Urdu translation of the bitcoin standard, and focus on what is minimally essential to achieve within our means: Teaching Muggles… sorry…. No-coiners, the very basics of money mechanics, the role of bitcoin in our strategic response, and the know-how to stack satoshis in a cold wallet! The rest will follow!

  Coming to think of it, my initial printing press analogy is poignantly relevant. The press encapsulated years of knowledge in a simple package easily disseminated to thousands, which could have overcome our knowledge gap had we adopted it earlier. Bitcoin, too, encapsulates the quintessential wisdom of centuries of humanity’s experience in what constitutes good money and allows it to be spread easily across the world. It is both knowledge, and a tool crafted out of that knowledge. If we miss the boat on it, we will not only lose to “usury capitalism,” but the Bitcoin movement, too, will be deprived of huge potential support from a quarter of the world population. We must join the rest of humanity in a last ditch attempt at wealth equality.

  2. Separation

  After educating people about money mechanics and bitcoin, the second step is the Hejira, our separation from the existing system.

  An Islamic scholar, Abdassamad Clarke defined “usury capital,” as “the use of capital that is both generated by usury and operated according to usurious principles, which permits a tiny clique of individuals, by the principle of fiat money amplified by leverage, to wield extraordinary power and accumulate unheard of wealth in such a manner as to subject the rest of humanity as menial servants in their project of self-enrichment, whether in the tyrannies of the East or the so-called free-market capitalism of the West.”

  The fundamental philosophical difference between Islamic and Western economics is how we view interest. Islam holds firm to the classical Judeo-Christian prohibition, believing that the time value of money is more fairly accounted for in equity finance style risk sharing of the invested capital, instead of a guaranteed return favoring the capitalist. Among other things, its side effect is prohibiting both the monetizing of our “future income” to issue fiat, and prohibiting the money-multiplier effect of fractional reserve, through the rulings of Riba, Bai-al-Dain and Bai-al-Madum.

  Bitcoiners and libertarians rely on an entirely different philosophical foundation to reach partially the same conclusion in regards to fiat, that it’s perverse, unjust and socially destructive.

  The end goal for both is the same: To separate ourselves from the fiat system and carve out an entirely new, independent financial system: The original idea of decentralized finance (DeFi)!

  Unfortunately, the bubble effect we so dislike in TradFi — traditional finance — is now itself widespread in the non-Bitcoin crypto world, what Ellen Farrington cites as the immense amount of “rehypothecation, leverage, and securitization,” which if misused can cause systemic risks that affect everyone. The practical reality of contemporary DeFi in the non-Bitcoin world is quite far from its theoretical goal. Looking at this aspect of “crypto,” some Islamic scholars took the liberty of invoking the gambling prohibition clause, something whose motivation we can sympathize with, even though we disagree with the conclusion.

  A lack of regulation at the administrative level cannot be countered by religious pronunciation of Haram status. It’s kind of like declaring cars as Islamically forbidden, merely because some people are driving them too fast and killing others. But presently, we are far less interested in how scholars view “crypto” than we are regarding bitcoin. The DeFi world’s shiny new investments offering unsustainable returns, its shady ICOs and the casino-like frenzy and get-rich-quick dreams of novice retail investors are far removed from what we advocate, from what we are daring to call a second chance for the Muslim world: A Bitcoin-based sound money adoption as a medium of exchange and store of value!

  But what is nevertheless commendable in the crypto world (led, of course, by Bitcoin) is the attempt to create this entirely new, independent miniverse of alternative, decentralized finance, isolated from the existing system. Building and expanding this decentralization, based on Bitcoin, is the essence of the second step of our revolutionary blueprint: the Hejira. Migrating from the old to the new. As Iqbal would have said, “Blow away this transitory world, and build a new one from its ashes” — khakastar se aap apna jahan paida karay.

  The only serious prior attempt for sound money among Muslims was the Dinar movement. But it only works in a physical jurisdiction: Where to mint, where to store, how to transport, how to coordinate electronic payments, how to deal with banking regulations, taxes and government interference? Theoretically, it was possible to instantiate an entirely independent ecosystem of issuance, storage, transport and trade using gold, but real progress on it was very slow.

  At the same time, the Bitcoin ecosystem has matured so much to be classifiable as an independent and isolated system, free from all interference from legacy finance. The Core Bitcoin Timechain, Lightning and Layer 2 smart contract solutions, and the globally distributed miner, node operator and supporter community, all combine to form a platform on which we can build and experiment with truly Islamic financial contracts of the form that are not possible with TradFi.

  In this ecosystem, we can resuscitate Islamic social and financial institutions like the Bait-ul-Maal, the Suq, the Waqf, the Guilds, the Hawala, the Wahdiya, the Qirad and the Musharaka, free from the restrictions of any government, securities commission or central bank.

  3. Protection

  And once this isolated system is deployed, we need to protect it.

  A story is told in Islamic lore, that when Abu Dharr Ghifari came looking to meet the Prophet, Ali told him to walk a few paces behind him, and if he senses anyone suspicious he will stoop down to tie his shoelaces and Abu Dharr should continue walking ahead. Kind of like a coinjoin to obfuscate where he was actually going. When you are small, you must remain in stealth mode and operate under the radar. Later on, when the small state of early Islam was established in a nearby city, it needed a number of armed conflicts to defend itself from being nipped in the bud!

  Deploying a sound money system, too, may need a precarious window in which the sapling would need fierce protection before it grows into a tree. The hellacious powers issuing the yuans and dollars of the world are way too formidable for any third-world nation state to get away with a head-on collision. In fact, we cannot even withstand assaults from individual speculators, let alone a concerted effort by the global financial cabal to preserve its status quo. El Salvador and the like are definitely interesting trailblazers to watch out for here, but it is too early to tell.

  If a sufficient number of first-world citizens band together to defy their government in adoption of sound money, the response of fiat-powered regimes would (probably) be much more restrained in handling them versus some rogue state from a third-world country attempting to defy the dominant currency. I was told by a prominent Islamic banker that when Mahatir toyed with the idea, he was sent a very stern signal to “cease and desist” by the powers that be!

  So, can a Muslim government adopt and get away with either the dinar or bitcoin? I believe only in the latter. Only bitcoin has the necessary technological edge in terms of its unstoppability and indestructibility that can substitute for the need of a national military power strong enough to protect a traditional sound money built on gold.

  THE ISLAMIC STATE VERSUS BITCOIN

  But many Islamic revivalists believe otherwise and their goal is usually larger in scope than financial reform alone. It is a more holistic quest to resuscitate the political, social and legal structures of precolonial Islamic governments. Encouraged by the spectacular rise of early Islam that dared challenge superior powers like Byzantine and Sassanids, they believe it possible to recreate the traditional theocracy along similar lines, one of whose side effects would be to eradicate fiat currency also. Such ambitious projects downplay the urgency of fixing our financial system: No need to separately struggle for it if it comes as a natural corollary to the larger political renaissance.

  Now the specter of such pan-Islamic revival has been thoroughly demonized in Western imagination, owing from our own side to violent extremism, owing from their side to a deep-rooted Islamophobia, and owing generally to ideas (or realities?) like the clash of civilizations. But my Bitcoiner friends — whose libertarian ethos is so refined to even self-censure the slightist hint of authoritarian enforcement in El Salvador’s legal tender adoption of bitcoin — will surely agree that it is entirely within the rights of the Muslim world to voluntarily experiment, on their land, with whatever form of government they fancy: caliphates, sultanates or kingdoms!

  But the reality of this dream in the minds of the majority of modern Muslims is quite different from what the world perceives. The moderate Muslim just wants Islamic principles to be the guiding source of their political and social order. But the strength of this desire is often encashed by opportunists, resulting in two recent distorted models of political Islam:

  1.The Iranian model: Somewhat broad-based and sustainable but toothless and symbolic. They are the political twins of Islamic banks, offering no real change to the common man, except moral policing. Financially, there even exists the oxymoronic Central Bank of the Islamic Republic. Why would you have an Islamic bank if you were truly an Islamic republic?

  2. Second, is the Taliban and ISIS model: Narrow-based, extremist and unsustainable, divorced from the comity of nations. ISIS did reportedly issue the Gold Dinar but to no one’s avail, except perhaps as a recruitment propaganda. News out of Kabul promises a more restrained and balanced government this time around, but is it a genuine change of heart or just political expediency?

  So, while the Muslim world waits for a true Islamic reformation, and the world holds its breath on how the next such attempt turns out, my issue with this ubiquitous political quest in the Muslim imagination is just NGMI — it’s not gonna make it! We can’t stall the effort of immediate financial reform on some future promise of a bigger change happening to facilitate it. As an Urdu saying goes, na nau munn tayl hoe ga, na Radha naachay gi: Neither shall the king be able to provision nine gallons of lamp oil, and nor will the stage ever be lit enough for his dancing girl, Radha, to perform!

  Nevertheless, assuming for a moment that a mature, viable, modern Islamic government does get established by some geopolitical miracle, faithful to Islam’s core tenets, and broad-based in popular support, the next and more pertinent question becomes: Will it have sufficient political, and if necessary, military power, to deploy a gold-based sound monetary system in their country, and then get away with the sanctions and isolation that follow?

  And this is where bitcoin, once again, outshines other alternatives. The one trait that sets it apart from all “crypto”, and indeed, all monies in human history: true, sovereign-grade censorship resistance, from both your own government and foreign powers. Without needing any battalions or bombs, bitcoin enables us to fight the good fight ourselves and win. And if the broader Islamic reformation materializes, bitcoin can support it, too, for bypassing potential sanctions and increasing national wealth!

  God has a knack for defeating evil by the simplest of designs — the mighty Goliath with a slingshot, the persecutors of the Prophet with a humble spider — as if to compound the humiliation of defeat by the plainness of its bearer. Who could have thought that the Kremlins, Zhongnanhais and White Houses of the world would be made helpless by the confluence of two elementary ideas: proof of work and difficulty adjustment! But this simple, easily overlooked and less understood killer combination of traits makes bitcoin an undefeatable tool in the hands of us, the 99%. We do not need to wait for anyone. We can do it ourselves with bitcoin.

  THE WAY FORWARD

  While the wallet addresses, exchange accounts, market cap, and of course, the hype around crypto is constantly rising in Muslim countries, much of this activity is from the perspective of a shiny new investment vehicle, a get-rich-quick bandwagon to which everyone wants to hitch! This has engendered the animated debate of investor protection, scam avoidance and the whole academic deliberation of whether they are at all Halal owing to a perceived lack of intrinsic value and being free from government control. While all of these objections on bitcoin from the Shariah perspective have been thoroughly refuted by various scholars and are easily searchable on the internet, the continuance of this superfluous debate is dangerously distracting: In the process, we are losing sight of the higher frequencies of this amazing once-in-a-lifetime phenomenon.

  Aye ahle-e-nazar zauq-e-nazar khoob hai laikin
  Joe shay ki haqeeqat koe na dekhay woe nazar kiya

  We need bitcoin, not because it’s a great investment (which incidentally it is), but because it’s a great store of value and a medium of exchange: A free medium of exchange, which can uplift us collectively if we just adopt it, en masse, as our money.

  To my fellow Muslims, here is a parting thought.

  We love and honor our Prophet to such an extent that even the minutest of his actions, Sunnahs, is recorded, revered and repeated, even if it be as simple as the table manners of cutting some fruit. But here is another Sunnah of bigger import: success.

  The change that he set out to achieve in the world, he did achieve it. As he breathed his last in the arms of Ayesha, he had already delivered on the promise he had made to his companions in the lowest ebb of their persecution: “… a traveler from Sana to Hadrarmaut will fear none but Allah.”

  Although bordering a little on logical fallacy, I would point out that he didn’t cite something more symbolic like the establishment of the Caliphate, or the conquests, or the subsequent power. He chose to cite, as evidence of success to what they were suffering for, the establishment of a certain social order: One in which an anonymous citizen would not fear physical or financial insecurity. I say anonymous, not a private citizen, because the choice of the word “traveler” is very telling. While you are known in your city, protected by your identity, and potential clout from a corporation or clan, it is suddenly removed when you are in a strange land. They do not even know your name, unless you tell them: You are just a wallet address. But this traveler is not afraid of loss of wealth, or being robbed, or not having the right passport, or the right vaccine passport! He can move himself, and he can move his money.

  We Dinarists and Bitcoiners always equate inflation with theft. Whether you snatch 50 rupees from a poor man, or the free fall of your currency leaves him with 50 rupees less of a purchasing power, it is the same. While every ill is not caused by our monetary system, there is the obvious administrative incompetence and a dismal economic performance to account for — but inflation is definitely a huge factor. And all our high talk, slogans, research papers, reform movements, activism and militarism have deviated from this one Sunnah: The success of delivering safety to this traveler again.

  Bitcoin can help us succeed. Like now! Not 20 years later. Not when some promised leader will part the seas for us again. But now, when the poor illiterate, helpless man on the street looks at us educated and privileged elites and asks: What did you do to level the playing field for me? The Islamic banker may say, “Oh, I developed this intricate Shariah compliant profit and loss sharing contract for you, approved by the council of scholars, and backed by the gold dinar, just wait for it to be deployed.” I will say, “Dude, here, let me help you buy a few satoshis and get you a Lightning wallet so you don’t have to revert back to the rupee when paying for your next meal!” I think you should do the same.

  Bitcoin deserves a fresh look from us Muslims. Let’s think about it. Let’s use it correctly. Let’s spread it. Let’s understand it. Let’s use Bitcoin.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 19:30

• US Successfully Conducts Hypersonic Booster Test In Utah 
  US Successfully Conducts Hypersonic Booster Test In Utah 

  The US Navy successfully tested a booster rocket motor to launch a hypersonic vehicle on Thursday. The test comes a week after China stunned the world with the launch of its hypersonic missile.

  A “static firing” of the hypersonic rocket booster motor was conducted in Promontory, Utah, according to a Navy statement.

  

  The US Navy “successfully conducted a second test of the First Stage Solid Rocket Motor (SRM) on October 28, 2021, in Promontory, Utah, as part of the development of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) offensive hypersonic strike capability and the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW).”

  

  “Today’s successful test brings us one step closer to the design validation of our new hypersonic missile that will be fielded by both the Navy and the Army,” said Vice Adm. Johnny R. Wolfe Jr, Director, Navy’s Strategic Systems Programs, which is the lead designer for the common hypersonic missile.

  “We are on schedule for the upcoming flight test of the full common hypersonic missile. Our partners across government, industry, and academia are continuing the excellent work that is essential to providing a hypersonic capability to our warfighters as quickly as possible,” said Wolfe. 

  The latest SRM test follows a series of ones validating the services’ new hypersonic weapon. The last tests were on May 27 and August 25. The Navy said that this one focused on testing the first stage solid rocket motor included a thrust vector control system.

  Last week, the services announced three hypersonic component prototypes were tested at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. A statement from the Pentagon at the time said the tests would help “inform the development of the Navy’s Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) and the Army’s Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW) offensive hypersonic strike.” Flight tests of the booster rocket and hypersonic weapon are set for the second half of 2022. 

  The latest round of US tests comes just days after China stunned the world with its hypersonic missile launch. Even though Beijing later denied and downplayed it as a “routine spacecraft experiment,” – General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Bloomberg TV the hypersonic developments from China are similar to a “Sputnik moment.” 

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 19:00

• Bidenvilles For Christmas
  Bidenvilles For Christmas

  Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

  “I used to be a conspiracy theorist.  But then all the conspiracies I followed turned out to be true.”

  The remark was made by a friend and Wealth Prism Letter subscriber over a recent phone conversation.  We’ll have more on this in just a moment.  But first, some of what prompted the comment…

  Here in the land of fruits and nuts things have always been a little whacky and wild.  The people and the politics in the state’s urban centers have the uncanny ability to bring out the worst in each other.  The coronavirus travesty has only magnified these character failings.

  For example, all the stimmy checks, generous unemployment payments, and eviction moratoriums have had a predictable outcome.  They’ve created a burgeoning class of people who would rather loaf and invite their soul over plying their time and talents toward something gainful.

  At 7.5 percent, California’s tied with Nevada for the highest unemployment rate in the country.  For perspective, the U.S. unemployment rate in September was 4.8 percent.

  Moreover, unemployment claims in California now account for one-third of the nation’s total claims.  Yet the state, while the most populous, only accounts for a little over 12 percent of the nation’s total people.

  At the local level, San Francisco and Los Angeles have been in an exhilarating competition for what city can be most stupid.  Los Angeles recently sprinted into the lead.

  Just this week, for instance, and with a nod to Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, the City of Los Angeles announced a universal basic income pilot program.  It’s called Big:Leap.

  The mechanics of the Big:Leap program are simple enough.  Roughly 3,200 low-income families will be chosen at random to receive $1,000 a month for one year starting in January.

  Mayor Garcetti calls the program, “an instrument of racial equality.”

  Why the colon mark is inserted into the syntax is a mystery.  And how the program will help people in poverty is equally mysterious.

  Poverty, remember, for a majority of people that live with it, is more of an attitude than a financial condition.  Giving someone free money for a year does nothing to adjust their attitude of poverty.  Rather, it reinforces their dependence.

  So it was with this backdrop, among other mad happenings, that one friend and reader offered the following anecdotes and observations…

  Tin Foil Hats

  “As I was saying, I used to be a conspiracy theorist.  But then all the conspiracies I followed turned out to be true.

  “Turns out the Wuhan flu, for example, did in fact originate inside the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

  “And now we know the National Institute of Health did fund the Wuhan lab’s dangerous gain of function experiments. Fauci lied, again!

  “And we all know what happened to Seth Rich.”

  “What happened to Seth Rich?” we asked, trying to recall if there was something we should know.

  “Let’s just say, Vince Foster.  And leave it at that.”

  “But there is one thing I can’t quite put a finger on.  Do you think U.S. supply chain disruptions, and the massive logjams at the ports, are deliberate?

  “I mean, could the lunatics in government be trying to further collapse the economy so they can create an even larger population of dependents?

  “The deranged push to get everyone vaccinated, in some way, seems to be part of this.

  “These ports – LA and Long Beach – have been in operation for over 100 years.  There have been world wars, economic depressions, dock worker strikes.  You know…  Bloody Thursday, Harry Bridges, and all that.

  “But nothing ever backed up the cargo ships quite like this.  Why now?

  “Have you been down to Bluff Park or up to Signal Hill?  The view of them all littered offshore with Catalina in the background is absolutely nuts.

  “I’m telling you, if something doesn’t give in the next 30 to 60 days we’ll all be up the creek without a paddle.

  “And that’s exactly where Empty Shelves Joe wants us.  And that’s exactly why I’m thinking this is deliberate.

  “Now I’d put my old tin foil hat on to shield my brain from mind control.  But, as I said, these conspiracy theories all keep coming true.  This one seems no different.”

  [At this point we could tell our friend was just warming up.  So, we settled back into our chair and made ourselves comfortable…]

  Bidenvilles for Christmas

  “I heard you were in Reno last week, yeah?  You know what they say about Reno?  It’s so close to Hell you can see Sparks.

  “Speaking of being close to Hell.  What the eff’s up with the LBC?

  “I mean, the city’s always had a seedy underbelly.  Most port cities do.

  “My dad graduated from Poly High in the early 60s.  I remember him telling me the area just east of where Ocean Blvd. crosses the LA River used to be called The Jungle.  It was the city’s preeminent oceanfront slum.

  “And when the Pike and the Cyclone Racer slipped into decay and disrepair in the mid-60s it turned really ugly.  The amusement seekers disappeared.  But the carnies, winos, and pyromaniacs remained.

  “That was back when Long Beach was still a Navy town.  Every now and again some sailor would get snockered at Clancy’s or Joe Jost’s and stumble down “Whore Alley” over there and get rolled and roughed up by the souteneurs and hustlers.

  “But at least it was contained.  Seems like The Jungle has now spread like a virus to infect the entire city.

  “Like in front of the library at the end of your block.  Have you been by there at night, lately?

  “It’s a full blown Bidenville – with barrel fires and everything.  So is the lot behind the vacant Sears across the street.

  “Several months ago I heard they were going to convert that old Sears building to a homeless shelter.  But I don’t know what ever came of it.

  “What I do know is that Long Beach city officials are trying to out-stupid Los Angeles and San Francisco.  They’re now talking about sanctioning homeless encampments.

  “Can you believe it?  Government sanctioned Bidenvilles?

  

  “Maybe the city will deliver them for Christmas.  Ho ho ho!

  “In truth, this is more Governor Newsom’s and Mayor Garcia’s doing than Biden’s.  But I still call them Bidenville’s.  Anytime I can hold this illegitimate President in ill-repute, I do.

  “Let’s go Brandon!

  “You know what that means, don’t you?”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 17:30

• 'Squid Game' Cryptocurrency Soars 40,000% In A Week
  ‘Squid Game’ Cryptocurrency Soars 40,000% In A Week

  The hit Netflix series “Squid Game” has inspired a new cryptocurrency, which saw its value skyrocket by 40,000% this week in just a handful of trading days.

  As of 0745 ET Friday, the “Squid Game” token, aka “SQUID”, stood at $5.41, up from $0.01235 when it started trading on Tuesday, according to data from Coin Market Cap.

  The relatively obscure crypto is up more than 200% in the past 24 hours and it now commands a market capitalization of more than $419 million.

  While the rapid spike in price may tempt more traders into the coin, CoinMarketCap warned on its site that some people appear to not be able to sell the coin once they buy it.

  “We have received multiple reports that the users are not able to sell this token in Pancakeswap. Please exercise caution while trading!” CoinMarketCap warns. Pancakeswap is a popular decentralized cryptocurrency exchange.

  The inability to sell the coins could be tied to an “anti-dumping mechanism” that the creators of the coin described in a white paper associated with the cryptocurrency.

  

  Like the South Korean show “Squid Game” in which 456 deeply indebted people compete in deadly children’s games for a grand prize of more than $38MM, the Squid token was launched as a way to buy into the Squid Game project, a crypto play-to-earn platform that will culminate with an online in a squid-game-esque tournament next month.

  The online tournament will mimic the six rounds of games featured in the hit series, but, as the white paper says, “we do not provide deadly consequences.”

  “Your experience will only reflect on the joy of winning rewards and sorrow of losing money when the game failed,” the white paper says.

  Another difference is that the online tournament will not cap the reward money for winning nor will there be a maximum number of players.

  Contestants will have to fork over a preset amount of the SQUID token in order to compete in each round of the tournament. At the crypto’s current price, the fee for the final round of the tournament, for example, stands at roughly $81,000.

  Entry fees from each of the rounds are split between developers, who said they’ll take 10%, and the reward pool, where the remaining 90% of the coins will be deposited.

  t the crypto’s current price, the fee for the final round of the tournament, for example, stands at roughly $81,000.

  And throughout the tournament, players will have the opportunity to earn non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, by winning rounds. The NFTs also appear to be for sale on the behind the token’s website, and they can be traded among contestants.

  Throughout the game, users will also earn Marbles Tokens, which is another reference to the show. Those tokens will allow users to eventually sell their SQUID coins and cash in, according to the white paper.

  Of course, while the international crypto community has embraced the game, the NYC school system sees the trend as a liability, and ha banned all students from dressing up s characters from the show for halloweem

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 17:00

• The $1 Trillion Child Tax Credit Is Really Universal Basic Income
  The $1 Trillion Child Tax Credit Is Really Universal Basic Income

  Authored by Adam Andrzejewski via RealClearPolicy.com,

  In the Democrat-backed $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act that funds so-called “human infrastructure,” is money categorized as a child tax credit but acts as a universal basic income for people with children.

  This expansion of the social safety net is a “turbocharged child tax credit that is really a universal basic income, which will discourage work and cost $1 trillion,” The Wall Street Journal editorial board said.

  

  While the bill extends the tax credit through 2025, the editorial board argues neither Republicans nor Democrats running Congress or the White House will ever repeal it.

  Democrats expanded the 2021 credit to $3,600 for children under age six and $3,000 for older dependents as part of the March Covid-19 relief bill.

  It was an increase from the $2,000 that Republicans offered in their 2017 tax reform plan, which was an increase from $1,000.

  Since it’s a “refundable” credit, it’s paid in a check to those who don’t owe any income tax.

  In July, the IRS started paying part of the credit in monthly checks, “all the better to get recipients hooked on regular government payments,” the WSJ editors said.

  “It has kicked free of any connection to income or taxes and is now a full-fledged entitlement.”

  Some proponents argue it could cut child poverty in half.

  However, Robert Doar, who ran welfare programs in New York, warned that sending families checks without considering the circumstances of a household could make families appear less poor on paper but could do little or nothing to actually change their circumstances.

  In America today, there are 10 million jobs and not enough workers to fill them. Instead of paying people to stay home, people should get a job.

  

  *  *  *

  The #WasteOfTheDay is presented by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 16:30

• Multi-Millionaire Activision CEO Signals Virtue With 99.9% "Gender Equality" Pay Cut
  Multi-Millionaire Activision CEO Signals Virtue With 99.9% “Gender Equality” Pay Cut

  Before President Trump rode down the golden escalator to destiny, before Twitter exploded into an online battle between free speech and wokism, there was GamerGate.

  Beginning in early 2014, GamerGate was a backlash against what many (mostly male) supporters saw as the growing influence of a handful of female game developers and game journalists, whom – the GamerGaters’ insisted – were trying to force video game culture to become more progressive in fit in better with their far-left ideals.

  

  Given that most gamers are men (few of whom would identify as radical feminists), the backlash against game developers such as Zoë Quinn and Brianna Wu, and feminist media critic Anita Sarkeesian – to name a few, quickly escalated to online bullying, threats and doxxing, according to Bloomberg.

  Since then, ‘woke’ gaming studios that hired an army of ‘protected class’ employees to avoid public scrutiny have been grappling with sexual misconduct scandals, transgender scandals, and other issues that arose thanks to years of walking on eggshells. It’s also resulted in a glut of big-budget games falling flat on their faces thanks to a forced diversity agenda that left the overwhelmingly male gaming demographic with a bad taste in their mouth. (If only Obsidian would make a Fallout 4 sequel)…

  Some have even criticized GamerGate as the seed corn from which the world-shaking events of 2016 grew – namely, Brexit and the election of President Trump. Which is perhaps why so many Gamer CEOs are taking such dramatic steps to prove that they’re doing everything in their power to give women a “fair shake” in an industry where lawsuits are still being filed over “frat boy culture” where women don’t feel comfortable.

  To wit – Activision-Blizzard, the maker of the popular Call of Duty franchise, has found itself in a tough situation after its lawyers failed to convince a California court to temporarily halt an ongoing sexual harassment and discrimination case against the firm that was fired by a small group of female workers.

  On their behalf, California’s civil rights agency sued the video game maker in July, accusing it of fostering an uncomfortable environment for female employees. In response, Activision denied some claims while firing or nearly 2 dozen workers and cancelling an annual event.

  “Activision denied some claims while taking steps to punish those accused. It recently ousted 20 employees, it said, and called off an event for its biggest annual convention in February.” –Bloomberg

  Now, Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has announced perhaps the world’s most text book example of virtue-signaling.

  After receiving a massive $154.6 million in compensation last year, which follows $30 million earned in 2019, Kotick has gregariously agreed to take a 99.96% pay cut.

  In a speech to Activision Blizzard employees, Kotick apologized that he hadn’t kept “the guardrails in place” when it came to the company’s culture, and that fixing the ‘frat boy’ culture is now his responsibility.

  “The guardrails weren’t in place everywhere to ensure that our values were being upheld,” Kotick said in a letter to employees dated Oct. 28. “In some cases, people didn’t consistently feel comfortable reporting concerns, or their concerns weren’t always addressed promptly or properly. People were deeply let down and, for that, I am truly sorry.” -Bloomberg

  According to the report, Kotick is instituting the following changes:

  • His pay will be reduced to the lowest he’s legally allowed to receive among California Law, and has asked to receive no bonuses. This represents a 99.96% rate cut.
  • Before Kotick can get his old pay package back, his company will need to increase the percentage of women and non-binary people to its workforce by 50% and invest $250MM to accelerate opportunities for diverse talent.
  • He also plans to launch a ‘Zero Tolerance’ policy for harassment.
  • And take steps to increase the visibility of pay equality
  • While also waive required arbtrage for sexual harassment and discrimination claims.

  We’re sure this will improve the quality of games, and totally won’t ruin them further like the most recent season of Rick and Morty.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 16:00

• Carriers Must Move 60K Containers Out Of Los Angeles/Long Beach By Halloween
  Carriers Must Move 60K Containers Out Of Los Angeles/Long Beach By Halloween

  By Lori Ann LaRocco of FreightWaves,

  Halloween is going to be an extra scary day for the logistics world. A total of 60,000 containers have been marked as beyond the dwell time and need to be moved out of the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach by the carriers or the penalties will start racking up. A total of 33,000 containers need to be rolled out of the Port of Los Angeles and 27,000 loaded containers for the Port of Long Beach — a whopping $2,633,940,000 value in trade.

  

  Carriers were put on notice this week when the ports announced that, starting next Monday, a daily surcharge of $100 per container will be levied. Did this light a fire and a surge of containers being moved? No. 

  The pace of trade moving out of the ports could be characterized as more of a pregnant pause than a surge. Live webcams of the Port of Los Angeles terminals show more images of empty lanes than robust activity.

  Turn times at both terminals tracked by the Harbor Trucking Association and GeoStamp also paint the snail pace of trade both before and after the announcement. 

  

  “We are having an emergency harbor meeting Friday morning to vote on this,” explained Port of Los Angeles Executive Director Gene Seroka. “I need to see progress on the movement of loaded containers. We need to show America we are doing whatever we can to get trade moving.”

  Noel Hacegaba, COO of the Port of Long Beach, emphasized this container push would be significant in alleviating the congestion plaguing productivity.  

  “This is roughly 40% of all containers sitting on the terminals today,” he said. “Pulling all of these containers by Sunday will take an unprecedented coordinated effort but it must be done.”

  Importers have told American Shipper they are afraid they will be on the hook for the fees. Some have already received letters notifying them of the additional charges.

  “The carriers have always passed on fees and surcharges,” said one importer who asked for anonymity out of fear of retaliation. “Why would the Biden administration, which is behind this penalty, think the carriers would not pass it over? The Federal Maritime Commission is already looking into the excessive demurrage costs we are paying! Carriers are making record profits.”

  Maersk sent a letter to customers on Wednesday detailing the penalties.

  

  When asked if the penalties would be passed over to customers, Maersk responded it was a work in progress since it has clients that have clauses in their contracts that stipulate no new additional charges.

  “This penalty was not intended to be a passed-on cost,” explained Mario Cordero, Port of Long Beach executive director, at a port update press conference.  Hacegaba added, “We are using every tool at our disposal to move containers.”

  The National Retail Federation and the American Apparel and Footwear Association tell American Shipper if these charges are passed on, it will only add to the mounting inflationary logistic charges importers have been paying.

  Hacegaba stressed, “We need the entire supply chain to step up.”

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 15:30

• "We Like The Cube" – Thousands Of Crypto Traders Are Paying Top Dollar For Tungsten
  “We Like The Cube” – Thousands Of Crypto Traders Are Paying Top Dollar For Tungsten

  We couldn’t dream up a better allegory for contemporary markets – where JPEGs are selling for millions of dollars and cryptocurrencies have become the market’s preferred means of hedging inflation – if we tried.

  Over the years, we have reported on the phenomenon of scammers producing fake gold bars using tungsten, an extremely dense metal. These types of stories would often provoke outrage among major bullion buyers, forcing them to verify their inventories with ultrasound spot checks. Stories like these have prompted us to question how much of the gold sitting in bank vaults might actually be tungsten. But as it turns out, even if this were true, contemporary investors probably wouldn’t care, because in our environment of topsy turvey markets, turns out, tungsten prices are surging thanks to the same army of online investors that sent GME, doge coin and BTC to the moon.

  

  According to WSJ, which published a story on the tungsten phenomenon on Thursday, traders are buying and holding cubes of tungsten. 1.7x as dense as lead, Amazon.com’s product page describes tungsten cubes as “surprisingly heavy”…and a “great conversation piece”. Amazon Prime members can get free shipping if they buy the cubes.

  The demand for tungsten came out of twitter and chat service Telegram. Crypto traders and other tungsten enthusiasts prompted a major run on tungsten supplies in recent weeks, with some paying $400 apiece for 2-inch cubes weighing around 5 lbs, and others paying $3,000 for the 4-inch version, which is about as heavy as “a low-horsepower outboard motor”, according to WSJ.

  Why are traders so fascinated by these metal cubes? The paper quoted a Florida lawyer lawyer named Drew Morris who works at a blockchain intelligence company. Morris bought his 1½-inch cube after friends discovered the trend. He said he found the density “mind-blowing.”

  “I keep it on my desk as a reminder of what motivates me—keep going, keep working,” said Mr. Morris, who also invests in cryptocurrencies. “One day, I’ll be able to upgrade to a larger-size cube.”

  Specifically, WSJ credited a “FinTwit” member and crypto influencer, Neeraj Agrawal, director of communications at Coin Center, an organization that lobbies for the crypto industry’s interests in Washington, for helping kick-start the trend with a joke post claiming crypto traders were causing an imaginary global tungsten shortage. “I’m going to be buried with my cube, probably,” he told WSJ.

  Nic Carter, another crypto influencer, has also been credited in helping grow the trend.

  Cube review @nic__carter @NeerajKA pic.twitter.com/nRD0aNV8nk

  — The Bitcoin Rabbi (@thebitcoinrabbi) October 18, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Those who have bought into the craze even have their own “rallying cry”: “We like the cube”, a play on “we like the stock”.

  Midwest Tungsten, a producer of the cubes, has seen its inventories hammered by the demand for the cube.

  Even NFTs of the metal cubes have sold out.

  Fintwit users who haven’t gone all-in on tungsten mostly find the whole thing hilarious.

  The Onion couldn’t have come up with this: pic.twitter.com/QkDxLUwbkv

  — Conor Sen (@conorsen) October 28, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  We can’t argue with that. But like they say, truth is often stranger than fiction.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 15:00

• US, EU Near Last-Minute Deal To Roll Trump-Era Tariffs On Steel And Aluminum
  US, EU Near Last-Minute Deal To Roll Trump-Era Tariffs On Steel And Aluminum

  Nobody ever said ‘Free Trade’ was easy. As it happens, it isn’t particularly “free” either.

  But for months – practically the entire summer – President Biden’s top trade representative Katherine Tai has been engaged in time-consuming negotiations with the EU’s Valdis Dombrovskis about a new system that would prevent a trade dispute with the EU that began during the Trump era from spiraling out of control.

  A few weeks ago, sources told Reuters that the US Trade Rep Katherine Tai felt she could resolve the dispute by the end of October. And according to a Bloomberg report published over the weekend, it looks like a deal to remove the steel and aluminum tariffs is finally within reach.

  

  But with Halloween just one day away, it looks like a good-old-fashioned Democratic can-kick might the only option left, with the new deadline Dec. 1 – which, incidentally, is the day US tariffs on EU goods would double without a deal.

  A deal would allow the US and the EU to remove tariffs on steel and aluminum that would eliminate more than $10 billion in export costs each year. It would also help reverse the protectionist stance that President Trump made a hallmark of his presidency, and which President Biden has often copied.

  For those who were around for the beginning of the Trump Trade Wars, they should remember that the dispute with the Europeans began in 2018, when Trump slapped tariffs on steel and aluminum from Europe, Asia and pretty much everywhere else, using a provision of the American trade law allowing a supposed threat to national security to be invoked as an excuse to jack up tariffs. Specifically, Trump slapped a 25% duty on steel imports and 10% on duty on inward-bound shipments of aluminum from producers, with a handful of exceptions allowed for the NAFTA agreement. Tariffs on European metal and goods continue to escalate under Trump.

  

  Still, Trump justified the tariffs with section 232 of the 1962 Trade Expansion Act, which deems competition in the international metals market a national-security threat. The statute allows for tariffs to be imposed without approval from Congress if the president claims that the imports represent a national security risk.

  Of course, unwilling to simply sit back and allow Trump to victimize them with his aggressive economic nationalist policies, the EU quickly retaliated, and slammed its own tariffs on products EU leaders felt symbolized quintessentially American industries: For example, Harley-Davidson motorcycles, Levi Strauss jeans and Kentucky Bourbon.

  Hope for a more broad-based deal intensified over the summer when Boeing and Airbus, the world’s two biggest rivals in the aerospace industry finally dropped their years-long dispute at the WTO.

  Now, if a deal isn’t reached by the end of the year, even more barriers to trade will rise, which would be particularly problematic at a time when supply chains from Asia, to Africa, to Europe to the Americas are snarled in a way that has no real precedent.

  For months now, Bloomberg and Reuters have reported that the two sides have been using a so-called “rate quotas” as a basis for their negotiations. A quota would, for example, impose a threshold on the amount of certain commodities that both sides can important from one another. However, if that threshold is broken, the tariff rate would revert to that first imposed during the Trump era, when President Trump started picking trade fights with American allies and geopolititical enemies alike.

  But in the post-pandemic era, the US and EU face a greater common threat when it comes to trade: the growing influence of China.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 14:31

• 20 Years Of Work For An Apartment?
  20 Years Of Work For An Apartment?

  If you want to buy an apartment in Hong Kong, Paris or London, you’ll have to come up with a considerable sum.

  Statista’s Martin Armstrong explains that. according to the Global Real Estate Bubble Index 2021 from UBS, a highly skilled employee in the service sector with an average salary can only afford a centrally-located 60m2 apartment in Hong Kong after 20 years – in Paris it is 17, in London about 14 years.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  Overall, the situation has tightened in most real estate markets around the world. For some of the cities listed here, the risk of a real estate bubble is very high.

  Singapore is one of the few markets to manage to ease the situation somewhat – while employees still had to work about 16 years for the apartment near the center in 2011, it will be three years less in 2021.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 14:00

• Biden Hits Iran With New Sanctions Ahead Of Nuclear Deal Talks
  Biden Hits Iran With New Sanctions Ahead Of Nuclear Deal Talks

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  A few days after Iran said it was ready to ready to return to negotiations to revive the nuclear deal, the Biden administration has hit Iran with fresh sanctions.

  The Treasury Department said the sanctions targeted two senior members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and two companies the US accuses of exporting drones.

  

  Because the US has already blacklisted the IRGC as a “terrorist” organization, all of its members are already under sanctions, so the new measures will have little impact. But the move is symbolic and sends a signal to Tehran that the US is not serious about giving Iran sanctions relief to revive the JCPOA.

  Iranian officials said Tuesday that Tehran plans to return to JCPOA negotiations in Vienna by the end of the month. A date hasn’t been set, but the EU said Friday that Iran and the other powers involved in the talks are working on setting one.

  According the The Associated Press:

  Iran has yet to commit to a date to return to the nuclear talks in Vienna but has signaled it will do so next week with a target of late November for resuming the negotiations. The U.S. and others have expressed skepticism about Iranian intentions…

  Iran’s decision to return to the talks came after the new government of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi reviewed the progress made in the initial rounds of negotiations that lasted from April to June.

  Raisi has good reasons to doubt that the US is serious about reviving the deal since the Biden administration refused to lift all Trump-era sanctions in the earlier talks. This forces Iran to negotiate limited sanctions relief, and the two sides remained far apart on key issues.

  Tyler Durden
  Sat, 10/30/2021 – 13:30

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Humanity Is Sleepwalking Towards Medical Apartheid…
  Humanity Is Sleepwalking Towards Medical Apartheid…

  Authored by Robert Bridge via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

  The tragic state of affairs, justified by a disease with a better than 99 percent survival rate, cannot continue indefinitely…

  

  Even as scientific studies show that vaccines alone cannot extricate humanity from the Covid-19 crisis, governments are rushing headlong towards the creation of a ‘vaccinated economy’ without any consideration for the consequences. It’s time for an injection of sanity and informed democratic debate.

  An astonishing thing happened this week that should have – were it not for a media industrial complex that coddles and cossets the powers that be – incited journalists to scream bloody murder around our increasingly imprisoned planet. What the world got instead was the deafening cacophony of crickets.

  When a reporter asked New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern about the possibility of the Pacific island nation being fragmented into two distinct classes of citizens – the vaccinated and unvaccinated – Arden didn’t miss a beat as she responded with her trademark Cheshire grin, “That is what it is. So yep. Yep.”

  After being further prodded by the deferential journalist as to why she favored apartheid, Ardern, who has already mandated vaccines for government employees or else, responded, unscientifically, that “people who have been vaccinated will want to know that they are around other vaccinated people; they’ll want to know that they’re in a safe environment.”

  Under normal conditions – that is, before scientific inquiry was sent back kicking and screaming to the Dark Ages – Ardern’s outrageous remark would have been greeted by robust and vigorous debate from both the political and medical communities. After all, the vaccinated should feel absolutely at ease mingling among the unvaccinated in stuffy public places given that they are, supposedly, protected? Isn’t that the point of the vaccines, to protect the vaccinated and get us back to some semblance of ‘normal’? If not, then why the incessant push to jab every single person on the planet, and not just once, as initially promised, but multiple times? The answer, at least according to Queen Ardern, is so that everyone can feel “confident” once again among their fellow man. That makes absolutely zero sense, especially as new studies show no discernible decrease in infection rates among the vaccinated. So why hedge our bets when just the opposite seems to be happening?

  On the brink of losing my job, can’t travel, can’t eat out, can’t stay in a hotel, can’t go to the gym, can’t go in any shops except supermarkets (for now), family tell me they’re not willing to see me for fear of breaking the “rules”…………

  Is this “life” from now on?

  — Geronimo 🇦🇺 ✝ (@NototyrannyNOW) October 26, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  In a recent study by Harvard researchers, published in the European Journal of Epidemiology, it was discovered that, looking at statistics around the world, “there appears to be no discernable relationship between percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID-19 cases…” The researchers then delivered a brutal body slam to conventional (political) thinking by revealing that “the trend line suggests a marginally positive association such that countries with higher percentage of population fully vaccinated have HIGHER (emphasis added) COVID-19 cases per 1 million people.”

  That is a truly shocking discovery, and one that deserves a serious public debate now that a mandatory vaccination regime – replete with the loss of jobs and lives – is being bolted down across much of the globe. But instead of addressing the health crisis with a modicum of restraint and humility, many politicians are gleefully capitalizing on the pandemic, using it as an opportunity to accumulate ever greater political power. This disturbing trend is happening across much of the Western hemisphere where, in what must be one of the greatest coincidences of modern times, a coterie of like-minded liberal leaders hold the destiny of mankind in their very hands. This cannot be considered a good thing by any stretch of the imagination. Although these individuals may owe no special favors to the pharmaceutical industry, their collective actions – denying the unvaccinated the same inherent rights to liberty and freedom as other citizens, including the corporate variety  – do not support such a premise.

  So how to explain this unprecedented power grab happening around the world? Best to examine the unmatched power of the media that promotes the message of Covid authoritarians, like Jacinda Ardern, and their unflinching devotion to a fragmented apartheid state. All in the name of health, of course.

  Noam Chomsky says the “right response” to The Unvaccinated is “to insist that they be isolated” from society https://t.co/T34V7anDGI pic.twitter.com/1bBzURPeEi

  — Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) September 2, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Political commentator Chantelle Baker told Sky News Australia that Ardern enjoys practically “full control” of the narrative in New Zealand because the government has paid “hundreds of millions” to the media. Now, in return, the citizens are stuck with compromised journalists who will “only push for promotion of Jacinda and…her ideological ideas.”

  Around the globe, in another power-grabbing liberal hotspot, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also enjoys no small amount of mainstream media support. In its 2019 budget, the federal government lavished select media outlets to the tune of $600 million in subsidies, the overwhelming bulk of the largesse going to left-leaning publications, of course.

  “Trudeau’s media bailout will not save the newspaper business,” warned Derek Fildebrandt, publisher of the Western Standard, one of the last free and independent media voices in Canada. “It will put it in a complacent, comatose state on life support, fearful that if it acts against its master, that the plug could be pulled at any time.”

  The power to declare pandemic rule will shift to the Premier under laws designed to replace Victoria’s State of Emergency.

  Fines of up to $90,000 or two years jail await those breaking the rules, which Daniel Andrews described as a win for accountability. @msanto92 #9News pic.twitter.com/TYz1t2hUN8

  — 9News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) October 26, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  South of the border, in the United States of Submission, the liberal-dominated media is almost 100 percent aligned behind Joe Biden and his mandatory vaccine regime. The media whitewashing of the subject comes even as several states, including Texas, Florida and Arizona have drawn a line in the sand, allowing their citizens loopholes from which to escape the wildly draconian, ‘vaccinate-or-vacate’ your job stance.

  Returning to the Pacific basin, in Australia, where new cases of Covid have decreased to a trickle, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews is snorting heavily from the absolute power stash, attempting to ram home a bill that would empower him to pronounce, like any degenerate Caesar, any and all future pandemics and the necessary emergency provisions.

  In a delightful document entitled the Roadmap – which comes off a bit like a Mad Max sequel – Andrews, who apparently moonlights as a PhD when he’s not pretending to be a leader, postulates that “there will come a time when Victorians who choose not to get vaccinated will be left behind…” as Australians begin “transitioning to a ‘vaccinated economy’ in this state, and ensure we have the right systems in place.”

  Those are some truly disturbing words, and ones that few people would expect to be tossed around blithely by a western leader in the 21st century. In fact, they fly in the face of democratic theory to the point where the question of abuse of powers cannot be discounted. I suspect this is the real reason why the ‘progressive’ radicals now working overtime in the U.S. to fracture societies around the planet are the same people who wish to eliminate Thomas Jefferson from the annals of American history, starting with stone depictions of his existence.

  Jefferson, in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence, which he authored, famously states: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

  Across the so-called Five Eyes alliance, comprised of the U.S., UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, a homegrown tyranny based on a creeping medical apartheid is threatening the “life, liberty and pursuit of Happiness” worse than all of history’s former tyrants combined. Covid-19 did not create the unbearable conditions for which millions of people from Auckland to Alaska are now suffering; what created our current crisis is the reckless response to Covid-19, which increasingly appears to be based not on medical science, but rather raw political opportunism. This tragic state of affairs, justified by a disease with a better than 99 percent survival rate, cannot continue indefinitely. In fact, it needs to end immediately.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 23:40

• 85% Of Afghans Face Food Insecurity In Upcoming Winter
  85% Of Afghans Face Food Insecurity In Upcoming Winter

  Food crisis forecasting for Afghanistan, called terrifying by the FAO, is projecting more than half of the country’s population will experience acute food shortages this winter unless actions are taken.

  As Statista’s Katharina Buchholz details below, according to reports by The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, 85 percent in the country are to experience any type of food insecurity, including food stress classified as non-acute, between November 2021 and March 2022.

  

  You will find more infographics at Statista

  According to the reports, drought conditions paired with the collapse of public services and the economy as a result of the Taliban takeover brought about the dismal conditions, which could increase food prices beyond the reach of many.

  Sanctions, conflict flare-ups and decreased international aid are also expected to decrease the physical access to food. Internal displacement as a result of the crisis is also a driver of food insecurity, putting pressure on larger cities where many of the displaced seek refuge.

  The 55 percent of Afghans expected to experience acute food shortage this winter is the highest ever recorded in the country, according to the IPC. Being in food crisis means that household cannot cover all meals anymore by their usual means but could seek out avenues like selling belongings or seeking extra work. Being in a food emergency, however, means that those avenues have been exhausted.

  A last classification – food catastrophe or the extreme deprivation of food causing malnutrition and death – is not predicted for Afghanistan. This level of food shortage is currently being detected by the IPC in Ethiopia’s Tigray region and to a lesser extend in South Sudan, Yemen and Madagascar.

  We ‘re sure the Taliban have a plan.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 23:15

• COP26 Is A Global Energy Embarrassment
  COP26 Is A Global Energy Embarrassment

  Authored by Viv Forbes via AmericanThinker.com,

  For 26 futile years, the net-zero maniacs have wasted fuel, energy, and taxpayers’ money to bite the hands that provide their food, energy, welfare, and public-sector jobs.

  Led by E.U. and AUKUS dreamers, they destroy reliable energy from coal, oil, nuclear, gas, and hydro while forcing us to subsidize net-negative dreams like solar, wind, wave-power, CCUS, hot rocks, pumped hydro, and hydrogen.  All such speculative ventures should be funded by speculators, not taxpayers.

  COP-Out-26 illustrates to the realists of China, Russia, India, and Brazil that the West has lost its marbles and is in terminal decline.  For Scott Morrison to surrender Australia to these green wolves betrays an army of miners, farmers, truckies, and workers in primary, secondary, and tertiary industries that support him and his Canberra pack.

  The fakery of COP-Out-26 is well illustrated by the provision of diesel generators to recharge the batteries of 26 electric cars provided for show in Glasgow.  But that’s OK “because the diesels are run on recycled chip fat.”  Horses and covered wagons would be more reliable and appropriate, and dried horse manure could cook their fake meat on their green, chip-fired barbeques.

  Neither E.U. nor AUKUS green dreamers can run their world on energy plans drafted by neurotic schoolgirls, clueless princes, deluded accountants like Ross Garnaut, and serial climate alarmists like David Attenborough.

  China loves Net-Zero, using its growing coal power to manufacture the wind turbines, solar panels, electric engines, and rare earth batteries for the woke world.

  

  But the subsidy tap feeding green energy development in the Western world will run dry.  Fake energy will fade away, leaving a continent of jobless people with silent mills, refineries, and factories.  Our land will be littered with derelict windmills, decaying solar panels, dead batteries, and sagging transmission lines to be cleaned up in order to restore our land to productive grasslands, crops, and forests.  Those huge concrete bases of abandoned wind towers will become permanent obstacles to restoration of this land.

  Next we will see digital carbon credit cards designed by green academics to ration our energy and food usage to achieve their Net-Zero Nirvana.

  A bleak future beckons.

  Scott Morrison and his team should boycott this final futile COP-Out-26.

  Barnaby Joyce should hang his head in shame — I know that he knows better.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 22:50

• Shellenberger: The Root Cause Of America's Homelessness Epidemic & Why The Term 'Homeless' Is Misleading
  Shellenberger: The Root Cause Of America’s Homelessness Epidemic & Why The Term ‘Homeless’ Is Misleading

  “We’re literally paying people in the form of cash welfare, housing, and other services to live in tents on the street, use hard drugs, defecate publicly, and commit crimes,” says Michael Shellenberger, author of “San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.”

  In San Fransicko I explore how the conversation around how to use law and order to advance civil rights gave way to a debate over whether law and order is an obstacle to social justice. The question used to be carrots versus sticks. Do you reward people for not committing crimes, or do you punish them when they do? But that’s been superseded by a question from progressives: what if it’s a form of victimization to try to influence people’s behavior at all?

  The governing majority in some of America’s cities seems to believe that the only real public policy problem is how to pay for letting people do whatever they want, from turning public parks into open-air drug encampments, to using sidewalks as toilets, to handing over whole neighborhoods to people who are heavily armed and purposefully unaccountable.

  Progressives have been in charge of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Seattle, as well as California and Washington, during most of the decades in which the problems I describe here have grown worse. On the fundamental policies relating to mental illness, addiction, and housing for the homeless, moderate Democrats, conservatives, and Republicans have either gone along with the liberal and progressive agenda or been powerless to prevent it since the 1960s. And it was Democrats, not Republicans, who played the primary role in creating the dominant neoliberal model of government contracting to fragmented and often unaccountable non-profit service providers that have proven financially, structurally, and legally incapable of addressing the crisis.

  In this episode of Via The Epoch Times’ American Thought Leaders, Shellenberger breaks down the root causes behind the sprawling homeless encampments found in cities like San Francisco.

  Even the word “homeless” itself is a propaganda word, Shellenberger says.

  “It suggests that the underlying problem is lack of housing, expensive rents, or poverty. And that’s not the case.”

  The term “homeless” lumps together two groups that are radically different.

  But it’s irresponsible to conflate mothers escaping abusive husbands, or people who are just going through some hard times, with people who are mentally ill, or drug-addicted, or both, Shellenberger says.

  Fundamentally, a victim ideology guides how progressives deal with homelessness.

  And this ideology refuses to demand even a modicum of accountability from so-called victims, Shellenberger argues, even when they’re engaging in self-destructive behaviors that could be deadly.

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to the American Thought Leaders newsletter so you never miss an episode.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 22:25

• Waypoints On The Road To Currency Destruction (And How To Avoid It)
  Waypoints On The Road To Currency Destruction (And How To Avoid It)

  Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

  The few economists who recognise classical human subjectivity see the dangers of a looming currency collapse. It can easily be avoided by halting currency expansion and cutting government spending so that their budgets balance. No democratic government nor any of its agencies have the required mandate or conviction to act, so fiat currencies face ruin.

  These are some waypoints to look for on the road to their destruction:

  • Monetary policy will be challenged by rising prices and stalling economies. Central banks will almost certainly err towards accelerating inflationism in a bid to support economic growth.

  • The inevitability of rising bond yields and falling equity markets that follows can only be alleviated by increasing QE, not tapering it. Look for official support for financial markets by increased QE.

  • Central banks will then have to choose between crashing their economies and protecting their currencies or letting their currencies slide. The currency is likely to be deemed less important, until it is too late.

  • Realising that it is currency going down rather than prices rising, the public reject the currency entirely and it rapidly becomes valueless. Once the process starts there is no hope for the currency.

  But before we consider these events, we must address the broader point about what the alternative safety to a fiat collapse is to be: cryptocurrencies led by bitcoin, or metallic money to which people have always returned when state fiat money has failed in the past.

  

  Introduction

  When expected events begin to unfold, they can be marked by waypoints. These include predictable government responses, and the confused statements of analysts who are unfamiliar with the circumstances. We see this today in the early stages of an inflation that threatens to become a terminal cancer for fiat currencies.

  Harder to judge is the human element, the pace at which realisation dawns and the public’s consequential response to the discovery that their currency is being debauched and their wealth being transferred stealthily to the state. But history can provide some guidance.

  If we consider the evidence from Austria before the First World War, we see that the economic prophets who truly understood economics became thoroughly despondent long before the First World War and the currency collapse of the early 1920s. Carl Menger, the father of subjectivity in marginal price theory became depressed by what he foresaw. As von Mises in his Memoirs wrote of Menger’s discouragement and premature silence, “His keen intellect had recognized in which direction Austria, Europe, and the world were pointed; he saw this greatest and highest of all civilizations rushing toward the abyss”. Mises then recorded a conversation his great-uncle had had with Menger’s brother, which referred to comments made by Menger at about the turn of the century, when he reportedly said,

  “The policies being pursued by the European powers will lead to a terrible war ending with gruesome revolutions, the extinction of European culture and destruction of prosperity for people of all nations. In anticipation of these inevitable events, all that can be recommended are investments in gold hoards and the securities of the two Scandinavian countries” [presumably being on the periphery of European events].

  The few economists who have studied American and European monetary and economic policies dispassionately and how they have evolved since the Nixon shock will resonate with Menger’s concerns. Mises also noted that this “pessimism consumed all sharp-sighted Austrians”. Menger’s pupil and friend, Crown Prince Rudolf, successor to the Austro-Hungarian throne took his own life and that of his lover in 1889 because of his despair over the future of his empire and that of European civilisation, and not because of his love affair.

  As with all historical comparisons, today’s decline in American hegemony is only a most generalised repetition of the process by which an empire dies. But from this distance of over a century from events in Vienna it is easy to forget how important the Hapsburgs were and that before Napoleon the Austro-Hungarian empire had been the largest and most important of the European empires. But putting aside the obvious differences between then and now, today we see little or no evidence of cutting-edge economists sharing the despair of the early Austrians.

  There is a good reason why this despair is absent today. Instead of economists independent from the state, universities, and professorial sponsorship, the entire economic profession is paid for by governments and their departments to promote statist intervention in the economic affairs of humanity. Feeding off statistics, mathematics is every policy-makers and investor’s religion. But economics is not a natural science governed by mathematics, like physics or chemistry, but a social science governed by markets; markets being forums where humans interact to satisfy their needs and wants, to exchange their production for consumption, and to manage their savings and capital.

  As Hayek said of his friend Keynes, Keynes was a mathematician and not an economist. Today we can confidently state that students are taught mathematics and not economics. Economists are no longer economists, but statisticians and mathematicians devoid of the a priori reasoning that was central to the science before Keynes.

  With the entire profession taught to believe in statist intervention, perhaps we should not be surprised that economists are not ringing the alarm bells warning of the consequences of decades of state manipulation of markets and of the catastrophe that evolves from denying there is any difference between money and currency, that is gold or silver, and infinitely expandable promissory notes and credit. Even many modern “Austrians” seem oblivious to the danger of a fiat money collapse, let alone the dire economic consequences. Among them there is even an antipathy against metallic money, which suggests they have not fully absorbed the theories of money and credit so lucidly explained by their earlier mentors.

  Hopefully, the decline of America and its dollar hegemony we will not result in military conflict, let alone one on the scale of the 1914-18 European catastrophe. But that might be a vain hope. In today’s America we see a hegemon struggling to get to terms with its decline and the reality that the rise of Asia cannot be stopped. But what concerns us here is the more obvious and immediate problem of its currency, dollars backed by nothing more than the faith and credit of the declining US Government.

  It is not too late to avoid a complete collapse of the dollar-led global currency regime, but there is no sign that the measures to avoid it will be taken. And with the exclusive dominance of mathematical economists: neo-Keynesians, monetarists, and modern monetary theorists alike, there is hardly anyone, like Menger, Mises, and the other Austrian economists who, before the First World War foresaw the economic and monetary consequences of unfettered statism and inflationary financing.

  Bitcoin — the canary in the currency mine

  We find ourselves not being warned of potential inflationary dangers by the state-educated pseudo-economists but by a motley crowd of geeks and speculators instead, who have grasped the relative price effect from different rates of currency issuance. Bitcoin’s quantity is capped while those of fiat currencies are not. All you need to exploit this simple fact is believe and convince yourself and others that bitcoin is the replacement currency of tomorrow for the comparison between bitcoin and state fiat to appear valid.

  This was certainly the story being promoted by crypto enthusiasts from shortly after bitcoin’s first trade until the end of last year. But they have become increasingly convinced that the future for bitcoin is not so much as a currency (after all, while its price in dollars is rising it is in no one’s interest to use it as a medium for exchanging goods), but simply that, like a stock index on steroids, it is the inflation hedge par excellence. And for fear of missing out, even investing institutions run by custodians of other peoples’ money are now piling in.

  But an index based on equities has the fundamental prop under it of being comprised of stocks the objective of which is to earn money for shareholders by selling goods and services for profit. With bitcoin there are no underlying earnings and nothing which is inflation-linked. In that sense it is a chimera.

  An argument has therefore developed, with investors and speculators buying bitcoin only because the relative rate of issue relative to fiat currencies is capped, which is expected to drive the price still higher as governments continue to print their currencies. The underlying rationale, that bitcoin is a replacement currency for state fiat currencies has been disproved and I have little more to add in this respect. It cannot be used for economic calculation, because for a borrower there is uncertainty of repayment value.

  Nor does bitcoin as a rival to state currencies hold water because no central bank will permit it to act as such. This is one reason why they are heading private cryptocurrencies off at the pass by developing their own, state-issued, and state-controlled digital currencies which can be used for economic calculation. Not only has the argument for ever rising bitcoin prices become its sole support, but the underlying rationale, that cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin qualify as a medium for transactions and will be permitted to replace state-issued fiat currencies cannot apply.

  By identifying relative rates of currency issue as a valuation factor the tech-savvy millennial generation has understood a partial truism. The other part of which they appear not to be fully aware is that the effect of monetary inflation is to undermine a currency’s purchasing power. It is a separate argument from one based solely on relative rates of currency issue. However, having half the story understood at least is an advance from not comprehending any of it, and when further rises in prices for goods become widely expected, as they appear to be beginning to today, crypto fans are likely to learn the consequences of monetary inflation earlier than their non-tech predecessors, and perhaps even before state-educated economists as well.

  For now, investors are being enticed by nothing other than the promise of riches to buy bitcoin as an inflation hedge, being disappointed by gold’s non-performance. In a recent quote in the UK’s Daily Telegraph a Morgan Stanley analyst stated just that: “We believe the perception of bitcoin as a better inflation hedge than gold is the main reason for the current upswing… triggering a shift away from gold [funds] into bitcoin funds since September”. But without the prop of being a credible form of replacement money the only reason to buy bitcoin is that circular argument: it should be bought because it is being bought.

  Furthermore, buying bitcoin funds dissipates potential bitcoin demand, because for a bitcoin fund to qualify as a regulated investment, obtaining regulatory permission is easiest when a fund deals mostly or wholly in contracts on a regulated futures exchange instead of the underlying unregulated bitcoin. In other words, much of the demand for bitcoin is being side-lined into paper versions rather than for bitcoin itself.

  Bubbles based on pure speculation always fail. That is not to say that speculative flows won’t drive bitcoin’s price higher still; as a possibility it seems highly likely. But that is for speculators, not those who seek protection from evolving economic and monetary events. Attention should be paid to Menger’s reported words 120 years ago, quoted above, that “In anticipation of these inevitable events, all that can be recommended are investments in gold hoards and the securities of the two Scandinavian countries” — except the securities of the two Scandinavian countries offer no escape today.

  That being the case, the price of gold measured in bitcoin would appear to present a remarkable opportunity for lucky holders of bitcoin and similar private-sector cryptocurrencies. This is shown in Figure 1 below.

  

  Since April 2015, the ratio of gold to bitcoin prices has fallen from over 5 to 0.03, a decline of over 99%. We have established why bitcoin has advanced: it is now due solely to the madness of an investing crowd, given that it is apparent that it will have no monetary role in the future. Market participants have either forgotten about or turned their backs against the metallic monies of millennia which have always returned as circulating media when state-issued fiat currencies fail.

  Why gold is under-owned and unappreciated

  Bitcoin is just part of this story: the other is the central banks’ resistance to rivalry to their fiat currencies from sound money. When US citizens were banned from owning gold coin, gold bullion, and gold certificates by executive order in 1933, the US Government’s desire to escape the discipline of gold as money became public. The resetting of international currency arrangements at Bretton Woods replaced gold with the dollar as the reserve currency with convertibility into gold limited to central banks and certain post-war supranational organisations. Even that failed, leading to the Bretton Woods agreement being suspended by President Nixon in 1971.

  Led by the US Fed, ever since the Nixon shock central banks have run a propaganda campaign to convince their private sectors that gold’s historic role as the money “of last resort” had been made redundant through the magic of monetary progress. That propaganda campaign is now fifty years old and encompasses the entire working lives of employees in all financial sectors. The dollar myth as the ultimate form of money is now fully institutionalised.

  In parallel with statist propaganda there has been a fundamental reform of the financial system to permit the development of various forms of derivatives. While derivatives previously existed in limited quantities, their massive expansion since the mid-eighties big-bang and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act created the means to absorb speculative demand for all commodities, including metallic money. According to the Bank for International Settlements, outstanding notional amounts of gold OTC derivatives at the end of last year stood at $834bn, to which must be added derivatives on regulated markets totalling a further $100bn. Together they are the equivalent together of over 15,000 tonnes of gold.

  There is little doubt that, like bank credit, the financial system’s ability to create paper gold out of thin air has had a profound effect on the price. Backing this inflation of derivative paper has been the expansion of bank and shadow bank credit. That is now coming to an end, with the implementation of the latest phase of Basel 3 banking regulations.

  Basel 3 and the net stable funding ratio

  If you Google it, you find that Basel 3 is an internationally agreed set of measures developed by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision in response to the financial crisis of 2007-09.

  It was a crisis centred on derivatives, which highlighted the inadequacies of minimum capital requirements, banking supervision and market discipline, the three pillars of banking regulation. Basel 3 is gradually being introduced, but the regulations which concern gold and silver derivatives are what specifically concern us. Curbing balance sheet risk from inappropriate funding of precious metal derivative positions has already been introduced in Europe, Switzerland, and the US with the introduction of the net stable funding ratio. The last major financial jurisdiction to be affected is the UK, which introduces appropriate regulations from the first trading day of 1922 — in only nine weeks’ time.

  Put briefly, a bank will no longer be able to run unrestricted derivative assets and liabilities without them being tied together. In other words, if a bank has a derivative as an asset on its balance sheet, it must relate specifically to and match a liability for netting purposes and be otherwise unencumbered if a balance sheet funding penalty is to be avoided. If a bank owns unencumbered physical gold as an asset, it can match that against a customer’s unallocated account without a funding penalty, if it has successfully sought and obtained regulatory permission to do so.

  Two consequences follow. The first is that a bullion bank can only run an uneven book if it is prepared to accept a funding penalty through the application of the net stable funding ratio.[iii]Therefore, liquidity will almost certainly be withdrawn from futures and forwards markets, at least because banks want to appear fully compliant with the regulations. And the second is that most of the BIS gold derivative number of $834bn referred to above reflects bullion banks liabilities to their gold deposit accounts. By the year-end bullion banks will want to remove them, and the only way this can be achieved is by paying off customer gold accounts in fiat currency.

  There could be thousands of tonnes equivalent of paper gold to reconcile in this way, leaving gold account depositors to either abandon their gold exposure entirely or to buy physical replacements in the market. And while the gaff is being blown on gold forwards and futures, reconciling central bank swaps and leases could also emerge as a problem.

  In short, the factors that have suppressed the gold price since the early 1970s are not only coming to an end but are being reversed. The liquidation of paper gold threatens a gold liquidity crisis, which in the past would have been resolved by making bullion available through central bank gold swaps. But with central banks already owed bullion by the commercial banks and increasingly concerned about monetary inflation, this facility may be restricted.

  For the leading central banks, the introduction of Basel 3’s net stable funding ratio therefore comes at a difficult time. They are already fighting to convince their markets that inflation is only a transient price effect and are beginning to reluctantly admit it is more intractable than they thought. The last thing they need is for the gold price to be forced higher by their own regulations, adding to fears of yet higher inflation to come.

  But for individuals seeking to escape a fiat money catastrophe it appears that the ratio of gold to bitcoin is at an extreme of overvaluation for bitcoin and an extreme undervaluation for gold.

  The next waypoints in understanding inflation

  Because bitcoin has introduced the concept of relative rates of issue for currencies, the masses of the millennial generations will be alerted to the debasement of fiat currencies sooner than they would otherwise have been. We are less interested in how this is reflected in cryptocurrency prices than how this knowledge changes relations between consumers and state currencies.

  Statist economists and monetary policy makers at the major central banks insist that higher prices for consumer goods are being driven by a combination of increased spending, which was stored up during covid lockdowns, and logistics disruption. To this can be added labour problems, with acute shortages in certain industry sectors and absenteeism due to continuing covid infections. Furthermore, energy and other input costs for businesses have been rising rapidly.

  Monetary policy makers are aware that a wider consumer panic over rising prices must be avoided. They understand that continuing reports of product shortages will risk encouraging consumer stockpiling, driving consumer prices even higher. They will fear that interest rates would have to be increased significantly to bring price inflation back under control. But growth in the major economies appears to be stalling, which in the Keynesian playbook calls for lower interest rates and monetary stimulation instead. This leads us to…

  Waypoint 1. Commentary in the main-stream media has yet to address this dilemma. It is to be expected at any time.

  Following our first waypoint, we can assume that interest rates will be forced to rise by markets beginning to discount further losses of currency purchasing power for which interest compensation is demanded. That will inevitably terminate the bull market in equities because it undermines bond prices, pushing up yields and disrupting relative valuations. Figure 2 shows that this process has probably started, though markets are not yet discounting a rise in bond yields beyond a minor amount.

  

  The technical message from this chart confirms that the 10-year UST yield is set to go significantly higher, affecting government borrowing adversely through rising interest costs. And when the bear market in these bonds becomes more obvious to investors and foreign holders of them alike, funding the government deficit will become much more difficult. The scale of the rise in fixed interest yields is likely to take market participants and policy planners alike by surprise.

  The only way in which monetary policy planners can attempt to control rising bond yields and to stop equities sliding into a bear market is to increase the pace of currency creation, particularly through enhanced QE. But for now, the Fed’s stated intention is to taper QE, not increase it. This leads us to…

  Waypoint 2. No anticipation of this dilemma in the media or independent commentary has yet been detected. Look out for it.

  In the run up to the northern hemisphere winter and the Christmas shopping season, energy prices and fuel costs are set to rise further. There is no sign of product shortages being resolved. The danger is that with continuing product shortages, consumers will push their purchases of goods not immediately needed even further into the future in case they become unavailable. This will drive consumer prices even higher, creating expectations of yet higher interest rates in financial markets.

  The Fed will have a straightforward choice: resist market pressures for higher interest rates to save financial markets, stave off insolvencies by over-leveraged borrowers and minimise government funding costs; or protect the dollar by raising the funds rate sufficiently to take all expectation of higher rates out of the market and ignore the financial carnage. This will be next…

  Waypoint 3. No anticipation of this dilemma in the media or independent commentary has yet been detected.

  There is a specific danger developing from consumer demand leading to a general stockpiling goods. When the process goes beyond a certain point the consequences of consumers disposing of their currency and credit in favour of goods become apparent. Currency no longer works as the objective value in a transaction, this role being switched to goods, because people begin to buy goods just to get rid of currency.

  When that process starts in earnest, the fate of the currency is sealed. A hundred years ago this was called the crack-up boom, the final abandonment of currency.

  Waypoint 4. No anticipation of the final nails in the fiat currency coffin is currently anticipated. When it is, the fate of the currency will have already been sealed.

  Summary and conclusions

  Those of us not under the direct management of the US monetary policies will not escape the consequences. All western central banks accept the dollar as their reserve currency and not metallic money, so events affecting the dollar affect all the other fiat currencies. Furthermore, the other major central banks led by the Bank of Japan, European Central Bank, and the Bank of England are pursuing similarly inflationary monetary policies. Central bank groupthink is concreted into global monetary policies. Without a change in their mandate the end of modern currencies is only a matter of time — and a shortening one at that.

  The dying days of fiat are foreshadowed by the speculative fervour in bitcoin and other leading cryptocurrencies. A new millennial tech-savvy class of investors has got at least half the message, that fiat currency quantities are being inflated. That a significant element of the population has grasped this much about currencies early challenges the long-held wisdom that not one in a million understands money, which allows governments to oversee a limitless expansion of currency and credit for significant periods of time. Therefore, the danger to state inflationism is that significant numbers will act sooner to avoid currency depreciation by dumping it in favour of goods. It is a process that once started is impossible to stop.

  While the establishment appears vaguely aware of this danger, it lacks the theoretical knowledge to deal with it. Ninety years of denying classical economics in favour of Keynesianism and other statist monetary theories are too embedded in the official mind. And in the absence of understanding the destructive forces of inflationism, prescient individuals seeking protection for their families, close friends and themselves have no option but to reduce their dependency on fiat currencies and all ephemeral financial assets tied to them. These include savings deposits and “stores of wealth”, particularly fixed-interest bonds and equities.

  The fashionable alternative is distributed ledger cryptocurrencies which are beyond the interference of the state, exemplified by the rise and rise of bitcoin. But this article points out that this has now become dominated by speculation, so much so that in their ignorance of catallactics investors are discarding metallic money in favour of bitcoin.

  This is a mistake. There are sound reasons why metallic money, gold and silver, have always been money used as a medium of exchange. And as Figure 1 in this article illustrates, relative to bitcoin gold is now less than 1% of its value in 2016. Bitcoin is the bubble; gold has become the anti-bubble.

  The systematic suppression of gold in favour of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency is now coming to an end. The fact that westerners hardly own any bullion as part of their savings is a mistake they will rue, if, as seems inevitable, current monetary and economic policies persist.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 22:00

• China Summons Four TV Broadcasters For "Excessive Entertainment"
  China Summons Four TV Broadcasters For “Excessive Entertainment”

  Until now, China’s increasingly totalitarian regime had raged over, scolded its companies and generally cracked down over (somewhat) legitimate reasons: fledgling monopolies, information warehousing, educational profiteering, and generally anything that did not comply with Xi’s new “shared prosperity” theme. But all that went out of the window overnight when China’s Xinhua reported that four regional broadcasters were summoned for an inquiry on Friday for airing “excessive entertainment” programs in their satellite TV services.

  The broadcasters under question are the regional radio and TV stations of Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Hunan; the four were called to a meeting with officials from the CCP’s central propaganda department and the State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), Xinhua reported.

  During the inquiry, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the National Radio and Television Administration did acknowledge the contribution of the four regional broadcasters in promoting mainstream values and spreading positive energy in recent years.

  Taking a page right out of a Stalinist purge, the satellite channels of these four stations were found to have flaws of streaming “excessive entertainment” materials and hyping entertainment stars to varying degrees, which according to a statement issued after the inquiry, “must be resolutely rectified.”

  In other words, no more “excessive entertainment” which may be similar to “too many notes” only nobody really knows: after all this is just the latest example of Beijing censors losing their mind.

  “In recent years, radio and television stations in these four provinces and cities have … made positive contributions in promoting mainstream values and spreading positive energy,” the bosses were told.

  “But some satellite channels also have problems, such as an excessive focus on entertainment, star-chasing and speculation, which must be resolutely rectified,” the officials warned.

  The central authorities asked the four stations to carry out comprehensive measures to improve their cultural and entertainment programs, maintain political consciousness, and give priority to social benefits.

  Like not airing “excessive entertainment.”

  Similar to channels like MSNBC, the scolded stations should instead focus more on vigorously prompting core socialist values, praising ordinary workers, and playing a leading role in the transformation and development of provincial radio and television services, the statement added.

  The broadcasters said they will earnestly implement the directives, comprehensively push forward rectifications, and speed up transformation. Because under a totalitarian socialist regime, that’s what you do.

  The warning to the satellite channels came as the SARFT unveiled a new production process for centrally approved radio, TV, and online audiovisual content “in the new era.” In other words, even more censorship is coming.

  The agency called on all radio, TV, and online content producers to start making TV dramas, documentaries, and cartoons, as well as public service films, that “depict the major achievements and history of the CCP’s century of struggle.”

  The newly commissioned content should “fully demonstrate that Xi Jinping’s new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics has taken root,” it said in a directive on Oct. 29. The SARFT will also impose strict controls on the selection of actors and guests, as well as on performance styles, costumes, and make-up, it said.

  Some social media users said the four satellite channels targeted for “rectification” were the only channels they ever watched. Online commentators took issue with the ongoing ideological crackdown on China’s media, which was already tightly controlled.

  “Isn’t the point of TV that it’s just for entertainment?” one comment said. Others worried that the move would take China’s radio and TV industries back to the pre-reform era.

  As a reminder, a political essay by a little-known commentator was showcased by China’s state-run media over the summer, suggesting that Xi Jinping is taking the country away from the pro-market policies of the past four decades, which have become associated with decadence by party ideologues.

  The essay, titled “Everyone can tell that profound social change is under way” and printed in CCP mouthpiece the People’s Daily, uses the recent crackdown on China’s scandal-hit entertainment industry to argue that profound political change is afoot that will focus on easing inequality. The essay argues that the CCP has launched a “profound revolution” with its crackdown on celebrity culture, billionaires, and the private sector generally.

  “This revolution will wash all of the dirt away,” said the essay, signed by Li Guangman, columnist and former editor of the trade publication Central China Electric Power.

  “Our capital markets will no longer be a paradise for capitalists to get rich overnight; our cultural sphere no longer a paradise for sex-crazed celebrities, and the worship of Western culture will no longer be a feature of our news coverage or public opinion,” Li wrote.

  The article was reprinted on Aug. 29 by state news agency Xinhua, CCTV, China News Service, the Global Times website, and Guangming.com.

  “Literary and artistic workers, film and television workers must get down to the grassroots of society, making ordinary workers and ordinary people the masters and protagonists of art and literature,” it said.

  In retrospect, it may not be a terrible idea to force a similar standard on Hollywood celebs who under China’s new draconian regime would be limited to make not much more than average wage. One wonders how many of them remain vocal liberals once their money was gone…

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 21:35

• McMaken: Three Reasons To Start Taking Secession Seriously
  McMaken: Three Reasons To Start Taking Secession Seriously

  Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  Last month, the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia released a new study which showed that, at least among those polled, “roughly 4 in 10 (41%) of Biden and half (52%) of Trump voters at least somewhat agree that it’s time to split the country, favoring blue/red states seceding from the union.”

  Moreover, majorities in both groups agreed there are “many radical, immoral people trying to ruin things” and that “it is the duty of every true citizen to help eliminate the evil that poisons our country from within.”

  On might conclude that people who think that things are generally going well in a country aren’t so concerned with “the evil within” that they think it’s time to “split the country.”

  It seems that President Biden has been unable to “unite” the country after all, in spite of his promises that it’s “time to heal in America” and that he will “be a president who seeks not to divide, but to unify.” Rather, it appears the country embraces a hard divide over a variety of issues with vaccine mandates and parental rights in public education being only the most current ones.

  At this point, there’s no reason to believe these divides are simply going to go away. Secession is likely to become even more mainstream as has been occurring in recent years, and as the old “liberal consensus” of the mid-twentieth century recedes ever more into the distant past. Moreover, opponents of secession are clear that they’re not willing to tolerate a separation that would allow Americans in neighboring jurisdictions to embrace other models of society or governance. But in the real world, major political changes can come suddenly and in unexpected ways. In 1987, most Soviet still assumed the USSR would continue to exist for many more decades—if not centuries. Because of this, now is the time to begin asking the difficult questions about secession and how military and financial questions can be addressed.

  Considering all this, we see three main reasons why it is increasingly unwise to ignore secession as a serious possibility. 

  

  Secession Went Mainstream

  The first reason we must now take secession seriously is that it’s no longer a topic of discussion among the most radical.

  In 2014, for example, a quarter of those polled said they thought their state should secede. By 2018, 39 percent were saying they think a state should “have the final say” as to whether or not that state remains part of the United States. In 2020, more than a third of those polled said states have a legal right to secede.

  Mainstream conservatives increasingly suggest the possibility, from Rush Limbaugh to Dennis Prager. Indeed, just last week, Prager admitted that secession offers a chance to live in a country that better reflects one’s own values. Should secession happen, Prager said, “ I would live in a state governed by Judeo-Christian values versus one governed by left-wing values.” Even elderly conservatives are started to grasp the idea: separation brings choice, and choice is better than ossified notions of “patriotism.”

  Indeed, it appears it’s no coincidence that older conservative operatives like Prager have been among those who are late to warm to the idea of secession. According to Zogby’s 2020 poll on secession, favorable attitudes toward secession decline as the polled group gets older. In the 18-29 year-old group, a majority (52 percent) think states have a legal right to secede. In the over-65 group the number is only 23 percent. In other words, the dogma of national unity is a dogma of older generations. Not only is secession increasingly mainstream, it may be the wave of the future as well.

  Meanwhile, members of Congress—including Iowa’s Steven Holt and Florida’s Marjorie Taylor Greene—now openly speak well of secession. They wouldn’t say this unless they thought their constituents agree with them. 

  Moreover, we might measure the growth of the secessionist position by the number of pundits who now feel the need to condemn it. Once upon a time, secession was regarded as so “out there” that it scarcely deserved any attention at all. No longer. Nowadays, conservative beltway pundits feel the need to go on rants about it on Fox News. 

  The Left’s Unionists Want to Run Your Life

  A second reason to take secession seriously is the fact that the Left doesn’t seem to be learning anything from the rise of separatism. Just as many Americans appear to be embracing a posture in opposition to rule from the center, the Left is doubling down on the idea that more local autonomy is not to be tolerated.

  A clear example of this is the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act introduced in the US Senate. The legislation, if passed, would give Washington vast new powers in regulating and controlling how states conduct their own elections. Originally, of course, state governments had almost total control in how elections were governed and conducted within each state. This makes sense in a country that began as a collection of sovereign republics. Just as EU member states conduct their elections in a way that’s locally controlled, the same was once true for the US. Over time—as in most areas—the federal government asserted more control. But with the Voting Rights Advancement Act, local control over elections would be virtually abolished with most any changes subject to a federal imprimatur.

  Naturally, opposition to surrendering state elections to federal control is denounced as motivated by racism and other nefarious goals. And this is reflective of the Left’s general opposition to secession and decentralization in general. The idea is “we can’t let those people run their own affairs because they’re sure to use local prerogatives for evil.”

  For example, when condemning secession in New York magazine, Democratic strategist Ed Kilgore made it clear he has no intention of letting people do much of anything without federal “oversight.” He writes:

  So might we drift apart more or less peacefully this time around? Possibly, but count me out when it comes to agreeing to a National Divorce. …[H]ow could I happily accept the accelerated subjugation of women and people of color in a new, adjacent Red America, any more than abolitionists could accept the continuation and expansion of the slavery they hated? Would it really be safe to live near a carbon-mad country in which the denial of climate change was an article of faith? And could I ever trust that a “neighbor” whose leadership and citizens believed their policies reflected the unchanging ancient will of the Almighty would leave our fences intact?

  Kilgore can barely contain his contempt. He might as well be saying “If those Red State troglodytes are allowed freedom, they’ll surely embrace a racist and misogynistic dystopia that fills the air with poisonous fumes. These are religious zealots, after all!”

  Anyone who doesn’t want to live out his or her life as subject to the whims of men like Kilgore should take his few moments of candor as an ominous warning. These people will never “happily accept” self-governance outside Washington’s purview because they quite literally equate it with slavery and the hatred of women.

  In other words, the more the Left condemns secession in detail—as they must now do because dismissive scoffing no longer works—they only provide additional reasons for why secession is likely the only real solution to the national divide.

  Now Is Time to Ask the Difficult Questions

  Finally, the mainstreaming of secession means now is the appropriate time to start asking the difficult questions about how separation would actually take place.

  For example, the issue of nuclear weapons cannot be ignored—although the case of post-Soviet Ukraine shows it’s not as intractable a problem as many suspect. Moreover, the question of the national debt ought to be approached. It will likely also be necessary to admit that under all realistic scenarios, a partial default is the likely outcome either with or without secession. And finally, there is the problem of “ethnic” enclaves. Historically, this always comes with secession, as with the ethnic Russians in the secessionist Baltics or the pro-Spaniard populations left behind throughout Latin America in the nineteenth century. Moreover, how “complete” would this separation be? It is entirely conceivable that a United States with two or more self-governing pieces could nevertheless remain within under a single head of state or within a single military alliance. 

  In real life, big political changes have a habit of occurring regardless of what the official planners want, and what the official plans say. That is, events have a way of overwhelming what the elites think is the proper way of doing things. But fostering serious discussion now could help avert at least some unpleasant surprises in the longer term. On the other hand, living in denial about secession won’t improve things. And, of course, the matter of secession is not “if” but “when.” All polities come to an end at some point either through disintegration or revolution. In many cases, the world improves when old states like the Roman Empire collapse.  The fanciful America-will-last-forever position is something that should seem plausible only to small children or the hopelessly naïve. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 21:10

• PETA Wants Major League Baseball To Stop Saying "Bullpen" Because It's "Insensitive To Cows"
  PETA Wants Major League Baseball To Stop Saying “Bullpen” Because It’s “Insensitive To Cows”

  People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have outdone themselves with “wokeness” once again on behalf of the animal kingdom. This time, PETA is in the news for urging Major League Baseball to stop referring to pitcher warmup areas as “bullpens”. 

  Because we’re sure this hurts the animals’ feelings when they sit around and watch baseball, right?

  And while that’s sarcasm, that hasn’t stopped the agency from petitioning the MLB to change the term. PETA actually argued that “bullpen” is insensitive to cows, TMZ reported this week. PETA is insisting that the MLB change the name of the warmup area to the “arm barn”. 

  As if referencing a barn is going to be any less “insensitive” than saying “bullpen”? Couldn’t the mention of a barn wind up giving horses somewhere PTSD? But we digress…

  

  PETA exec Tracy Reiman, who obviously has a lot of time on her hands, commented: “Words matter, and baseball ‘bullpens’ devalue talented players and mock the misery of sensitive animals.”

  The organization takes exception with the fact that the “bullpen” is a holding area where bulls are kept before slaughter.

  “Strike out the word ‘bullpen,’ which references the holding area where terrified bulls are kept before slaughter, in favor of a more modern, animal-friendly term,” PETA said.

  Ah, strike out. We see what you did there. Great work advancing the cause, guys. Godspeed.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 20:45

• FBI Asks US Businesses To Work Closely With The Agency To Counter China
  FBI Asks US Businesses To Work Closely With The Agency To Counter China

  Authored by Dave DeCamp via AntiWar.com,

  FBI Director Christopher Wray urged private companies Thursday to work with the agency to counter China and prevent the Asian country from becoming “the world’s only superpower.”

  Wray claims China could become the world’s dominant power by amassing intellectual property. The accusation that Beijing steals intellectual property was the primary basis for the Trump administration’s trade war with China, which is continuing under President Biden.

  

  Wray accused China of trying to access information through cyberattacks. “Too often when we see a cyberthreat and start digging, we find that the same adversary is also working with an unwitting company insider to target… sensitive and proprietary information,” he said.

  The FBI chief also claimed China was using “non-traditional collectors” to gain information in the US, including “businessmen, different kinds of researchers and graduate students, scientists, ostensibly private companies.”

  He said these private individuals are “effectively under the thumb of the Chinese Communist Party, all geared towards a common aim of trying to steal our information to put the Chinese government in a way to become the world’s only superpower.”

  The idea that the FBI suspects anyone from China of being a spy for Beijing has grave implications for the civil liberties of Chinese Americans and Chinese residents living in the US. The FBI’s campaign has already led to the agency falsely accusing Chinese professors in the US of spying for Beijing.

  It’s now common for US officials to claim China is the top “threat” facing the US, but Wray, a holdover from the Trump administration, has been making that claim for years. In 2018, he told Congress that China represents “the broadest, most complicated, most long-term counter-intelligence threat we face.”

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 20:20

• Airbnb Canceling One Night Halloween Bookings To Deter "Party Houses" 
  Airbnb Canceling One Night Halloween Bookings To Deter “Party Houses” 

  Airbnb is taking steps to prevent wild Halloween weekend parties at homes rented through its platform. New restrictions began on Wednesday and will last through the weekend that will limit large gatherings. 

  For the second consecutive year, Airbnb has enforced temporary restrictions around Halloween to prevent parties. One-night reservations will be blocked this weekend for users without a history of positive reviews.

  

  The vacation rentals platform also announced occupancy limitations to 16 and encouraged neighbors to report suspicious activity. 

  Restrictions led to a 49% plunge in unauthorized parties for Halloween in the U.S. and Canada for 2020.

  Last year, restrictions were first implemented after a Halloween party at a Bay Area Airbnb rental left five people dead in 2019. At the time, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said the company would examine measures to ban “party houses.” 

  The company this year has published a set of rules for guests for this weekend: 

  • For one-night reservations — Guests without a history of positive reviews on Airbnb will be prohibited from making one-night reservations in entire home listings.
  • For two-night reservations — Airbnb will deploy more stringent restrictions on two-night reservations that may pose heightened risk for parties. For example, the company will use technology that restricts certain local and last-minute bookings by guests without a history of positive reviews on Airbnb and also block reservations within an expanded radius.
  • Guests who have a history of positive reviews on Airbnb will not be subject to these restrictions.
  • Guests making one or two-night reservations will need to attest that they understand Airbnb’s party ban and that they could face legal consequences for breaking the rules.

  Airbnb expects their anti-party measures this Halloween weekend will deter “Project X” type style parties. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 19:55

• Dan Bongino Ends Radio Program In Vaccine Mandate Battle With Employer
  Dan Bongino Ends Radio Program In Vaccine Mandate Battle With Employer

  Authored by Christopher Burroughs via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  Conservative radio host Dan Bongino announced his daily show will only air replays while he deals with a COVID-19 vaccine mandate with his show’s parent company Cumulus Media.

  

  Bongino shared the news during his Wednesday online podcast.

  “They didn’t consult with us content providers. I strongly object to the mandate,” Bongino said.

  “The fight with them is having a real impact. Behind the scenes, it’s getting a little ugly here. I wasn’t on the radio today. I don’t know what they did, played the ‘best of’ or whatever. You don’t treat people this way. You don’t let people go because they insist their body is theirs,” he added.

  During Wednesday’s podcast, Bongino also urged listeners to join the Locals platform. Video platforms Rumble and Locals merged on Tuesday after Rumble recently acquired the tech company.

  “It is unfortunately an ugly fight. I wish it weren’t,” Bongino said as he reviewed the controversy with Cumulus during his Wednesday episode.

  “Some of the people who were fired by Cumulus whose stories are piling in, they are really disturbing. I hear you … I read one of the emails yesterday and I’m going to get to more of them as time goes on.”

  Though Bongino is personally fully vaccinated against COVID-19, he opposes the company’s vaccine mandate.

  The former New York police officer and Secret Service agent’s message first pushed back on the media group’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate requirement last week.

  “You can have me or you can have the [vaccine] mandate. But you can’t have both of us,” Bongino said during his nationwide radio program on Oct. 18.

  .@dbongino to Cumulus Radio: “You can have me or you can have the [vaccine] mandate. But you can’t have both of us.”

  Find your local station to listen LIVE: https://t.co/IK6DZpbTzJ

  Or watch here: https://t.co/NaTE4NeVLy pic.twitter.com/tKzemVWEbB

  — Bongino Report (@BonginoReport) October 18, 2021

  “I’m not letting this go,” Bongino publicly declared in another post.

  “I’m not even considering letting it go. I’m announcing it publicly so you know I’m not letting it go,” he added.

  .@dbongino publicly calls out Cumulus, who carries his radio show on hundreds of stations, for issuing its own vaccine mandate.

  “I’m not letting this go.”

  Find your local station to listen LIVE: https://t.co/IK6DZpbTzJ

  Or watch here: https://t.co/NaTE4NeVLy pic.twitter.com/7fAfJY9FoH

  — Bongino Report (@BonginoReport) October 18, 2021

  Cumulus Media announced a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees on Aug. 12.

  CEO Mary Berner stated in a message to employees that they needed to be fully vaccinated by Sept. 27—two weeks prior to the scheduled return date.

  The statement included various exceptions to the mandate. Cumulus Media says its workforce includes approximately 4,000 people and runs more than 400 stations in 80 markets.

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 19:30

• Janet Yellen Flip-Flops, Insists Biden's 'BBB' Plan Will Actually Help Suppress Inflation
  Janet Yellen Flip-Flops, Insists Biden’s ‘BBB’ Plan Will Actually Help Suppress Inflation

  Before jetting off to Rome for a weekend G-20 summit in Rome, President Biden on Thursday offered his most detailed outline yet of the Dems new $1.75 trillion social spending/climate changing package, a number that was too small for progressives, who proceeded to block a Thursday vote on the president’s “bipartisan” infrastructure bill.

  Speaking to CNBC from Rome where Yellen is attending the G-20 conference of global leaders with President Biden, the Treasury Secretary delivered her latest pitch in support of the $1.75 trillion social spending-climate agenda, covering a critical area of concern that her boss did his best to avoid during his speech yesterday.

  That subject? Inflation, which Biden’s aides probably felt might be too dangerous for him to discuss due to his cognitive decline.

  

  And so Treasury Secretary Yellen was left to pick up the slack with a 0500ET interview on CNBC’s Worldwide Exchange. The broad takeaway from her remarks: President Biden’s two-party social-spending-climate plan and his “bipartisan” infrastructure plan will actually help lower inflation by reducing costs for households for key services like child-care, health care and other issues. Ultimately, she expects these pressures to subside by the second half of next year.

  “I don’t think that these investments will drive up inflation at all,” she told CNBC’s Sara Eisen during a live “Worldwide Exchange” interview.

  Months ago, Yellen was one of the first to warn about the looming inflationary beast. But now she’s in charge of taming it, so of course her rhetoric has changed.

  Biden claimed during his White House address yesterday that “17 Nobel winning economists” had signed off on his framework, claiming it wouldn’t push up inflation because it would be – more or less – be fully paid for by tax hikes while creating new economic opportunities. Right now, the bigger driver of inflation is the supply-side shocks like those unveiled by Apple during last night’s earnings.

  “I think supply chain issues are holding our economy back somewhat…it will take a while to boost supply.” @SecYellen discusses the impact of the supply chain crunch on the American and global economy, and tells @SaraEisen when to expect some relief: pic.twitter.com/yyzrsOSlmL

  — Worldwide Exchange (@CNBCWEX) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Yellen renewed her push for White House spending plans that are unpopular with several factions of Congress and have yet to be approved. But even as the headline CPI number hits its highest level in 30 years, Yellen insisted that Biden’s program would be a net benefit for workers.

  “It will boost the economy’s potential to grow, the economy’s supply potential, which tends to push inflation down, not up,” she said. “For many American families experiencing inflation, seeing the prices of gas and other things that they buy rise, what this package will do is lower some of the most important costs, what they pay for health care, for child care. It’s anti-inflationary in that sense as well.”

  The only problem with Yellen’s worldview right now is that, as the holiday’s approach, GDP is slowing because more than 100 ships are being left floating in a massive logjam making it nearly impossible for companies to obtain the goods they need ahead of the holiday season. As we noted the other day, economists from the American farm bureau warned that the US is headed for its expensive Thanksgiving ever.

  In effect, the reality of our current economy reflects the exact opposite of what Yellen says is coming just around the corner.

  “Not only has inflation risen, but growth also has decelerated. Due in large part to supply issues that have left dozens of ships stranded at U.S. ports, the pace of gross domestic product growth slowed to 2% in the third quarter, the slowest rate since the pandemic-induced recession ended in April 2020.

  Part of the administration’s G-20 agenda will be addressing its pet economic concerns, including the implementation of a global minimum for corporate taxes, as well as addressing climate change and the supply chain issues that have hampered growth and threaten to cut into holiday spending patterns. Yellen said she expects the supply chain issues “will be addressed over the medium term.” She called the White House’s Build Back Better program “transformational” in addressing the economy’s needs as the nation seeks to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic. She insisted that the spending plans are “fully paid for” through tax proposals primarily aimed at higher earners and corporations. “I think it really helps us invest in physical capital. That’s public infrastructure that’s important to productivity growth,” she said. “There’s investment in human capital, there’s investment in research and development, the support that families will receive that will help them participate in the labor market.”

  As we quipped on twitter just a week ago, the nabobs running American fiscal and monetary policy have been slowly moving the goalposts vis-a-vis inflation since the start of the year, when Larry Summers first warned about the risks of rising inflation – prompting his fellow academics to response with a mix of derision and mockery.

  Big finance experts:

  Q1 2021: There is inflation, but it’s transitory

  Q3 2021: Ok, inflation isn’t transitory, but there is no stagflation

  Q1 2022: Ok, there is stagflation, but this time is different and we are definitely not in the 1970s

  — zerohedge (@zerohedge) October 22, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Now, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has revised the narrative once again: President Biden’s massive spending plan won’t stoke even more inflation (like other recent COVID-related stmulus plans have) because the Biden plan will help stoke economic growth by allowing more women to participate in the workforce while investing in “public infrastructure.”

  She called the White House’s Build Back Better program “transformational” in addressing the economy’s needs as the nation seeks to emerge from the Covid-19 pandemic. She insisted that the spending plans are “fully paid for” through tax proposals primarily aimed at higher earners and corporations.
  “I think it really helps us invest in physical capital. That’s public infrastructure that’s important to productivity growth,” she said. “There’s investment in human capital, there’s investment in research and development, the support that families will receive that will help them participate in the labor market.”

  In the end, she’s hopeful that economic growth will accelerate and inflation will recede. But to claim that this is a certainty is magical thinking at best.

  Over the past few weeks, the debate surrounding the inherent “transitoriness of inflation” has become increasingly fierce, forcing Fed Chairman Jerome Powell to tacitly signale to other senior Fed officials that the word “transitory” shouldn’t be used during public remarks, even as  America’s current inflationary issues, as the accelerating price pressures have already risen more quickly than the Fed had anticipated (something billionaire PTJ warned is the “biggest threat to society).

  Yellen said she Friday she expects inflation to ebb over time and return to its longer-run average around 2%, which tracks with the Fed’s latest economic projections. The fact that it hasn’t subsided as quickly as the Fed had hoped is simply a reflection of the fact that humanity is still caught in an unprecedented pandemic in a globalized world.

  “I think it’s still fair to use [‘transitory’] in the sense that even if it doesn’t mean a month or two, it means a little bit longer than that. I think it conveys that the pressures that we’re seeing are related to a unique shock to the economy,” she said. “As the United States recovers and as vaccinations proceed globally, and the global economic activity revives, that pricing pressure will ease.”

  To be sure, not every business has been harmed or frustrated by inflation. Take hotels, for instance, which have the luxury of re-setting their prices every night.  “If you look at the $3 trillion of incremental savings during COVID, there’s a long way to go to spend it all. Thank you Federal Reserve and the U.S. Congress for fiscal and monetary stimulus,” said CEO Christopher Nassetta.

  But what we would like to know is why Yellen and other top officials at the Fed and elsewhere seem so blithe to throw away their reputations as sober-minded observers of the American economy. There was – not all that long ago – a time when Yellen spoke honestly about the inflationary threat. But now that this threat has apparently surpassed the Fed and Treasury’s worst-case scenarios, the Bide Admin and its top economic officials have decided to return to magical thinking while Biden weighs deploying the National Guard to drive trucks laden with goods off boatss.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 19:05

• South Dakota Gov. Noem Signs Order To 'Protect' State Employees From Biden's Vaccine Mandate
  South Dakota Gov. Noem Signs Order To ‘Protect’ State Employees From Biden’s Vaccine Mandate

  Authored by Isabel Van Brugen via the Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem signed an executive order this week to “protect” state employees against President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate by allowing them to easily obtain medical and religious exemptions.

  “South Dakota is fighting back against the heavy hand of @JoeBiden & his Administration,” the Republican governor announced on Twitter. “Today I signed an Executive Order to protect state employees, & those w/ federal contracts who are being forced to get vaccinated against their wishes. The order protects medical & religious exemptions for these workers.”

  “Additionally, I am working w/ legislators on addressing other areas. I have always said the decision to get vaccinated should be a personal choice-not a mandate from Joe Biden, Fauci or your boss,” she added.

  Noem said the move was necessary to ensure that employees aren’t forced to get COVID-19 vaccinations under  Biden’s initiative, which covers not only people directly paid by federal contracts but also anyone who works to support them.

  

  State lawmakers have said South Dakotans are being denied medical and religious exemptions from feds and have called for a special session to stop it.

  Noem spokesman Jordan Overturf said Noem’s exemptions are “explicit and offer a clear path” for state workers to opt-out of the shots.

  In a press release from Noem’s office, the governor said that employees who wish to receive a medical exemption from the vaccine mandate need a note from a doctor stating that the COVID-19 vaccination is too risky for health reasons.

  Workers who wish to be exempted for religious reasons must fill out a form from the Bureau of Human Resources that states that they “dissent and object to receiving a COVID-19 vaccine on religious grounds, which includes moral, ethical, and philosophical beliefs or principles.”

  “Due to established precedent, this Executive Order does not apply to service members with the South Dakota National Guard who must meet federal readiness responsibilities for deployment,” the release adds.

  It also states that Noem will work during next year’s legislative session with South Dakota lawmakers to make these “protections” for state employees permanent, and “to extend similar health and religious liberty protections” to employees of private businesses who adopted mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policies.

  The governor earlier criticized proposals by Republican lawmakers to ban vaccine mandates as “not conservative” because they’re telling businesses what to do and how to treat their employees. This order, spokesman Overturf said, is about upholding rights already included in the Constitution.

  “She has repeatedly said private businesses should offer medical and religious exemptions for COVID vaccine mandates,” Overturf said.

  Noem earlier said on Twitter that the state will “l stand up to defend freedom,” referring to the president’s vaccine mandates.

  “@JoeBiden see you in court,” she wrote in September, later adding that her legal team is prepared to stand up to the Biden administration’s mandates.

  The Epoch Times has contacted the White House for comment.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 18:40

• Lincoln Project Democrat Operatives Busted For White Nationalist Hoax
  Lincoln Project Democrat Operatives Busted For White Nationalist Hoax

  The anti-Trump, pedo-protecting Lincoln Project was forced to issue an emergency press release Friday afternoon after Democratic operatives they paid to impersonate tiki-torch wielding Trump supporters were doxxed, after they stood in front of Republican gubernatorial candidate Glenn Youngkin’s campaign bus.

  

  The hoax was spread by several notables, including Terry McAuliffe’s spokeswoman, Christina Freundlich.

  

  It was also spread by MSM journos:

  Dem Party operatives and MSNBC “analysts” spent the day spreading a photo that was dubious from the start – staged to make it appear neo-Nazis were supporting Glenn Youngkin – and now it turns out that, yet again, they spread disinformation. Over and over: the same people do this https://t.co/5Pmr2Oku1j

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2021

  And then… the internet figured out who the operatives were;

  One of them is the financial director for the Virginia Young Democrats… and since being outed as such, has made his Twitter private.

  You’re welcome for me doing your job for you. pic.twitter.com/YVhNbm74bP

  — Tim Young (@TimRunsHisMouth) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  

  And they began frantically scrubbing their social media history:

  Oh. pic.twitter.com/DmtVjuoIsD

  — Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) October 29, 2021

  Holy sh*t

  Colleen Wachenfeld rebranded her Twitter account handle several times after being exposed for posing as a neo-Nazi pic.twitter.com/DhltQl7mhF

  — Jewish Deplorable (@TrumpJew2) October 29, 2021

  After the hoax unraveled, the Lincoln Project issued a press release taking credit.

  “Today’s demonstration was our way of reminding Virginia voters of what happened in Charlottesville four years ago, the Republican party’s embrace of those values, and Glenn Youngkin’s failure to condemn it.”

  Lincoln Project claims credit for the “white supremacist” stunt at Youngkin’s campaign event today. pic.twitter.com/h18Sfk5AUC

  — John McCormack (@McCormackJohn) October 29, 2021

  Of course the Lincoln project would recruit young boys for this https://t.co/qfCdgFjv36

  — Ahmed Al Assliken (@assliken) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Called it at 10:18am today. pic.twitter.com/jlS3GWtJbK

  — Sean Davis (@seanmdav) October 29, 2021

  To be clear:

  Virginia Democrat operatives dressed up as Neo-Nazis holding tiki-torches today to smear their opponent and attempted to pass it off as actually happening

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Bringing it home is Glenn Greenwald, who opines with yet another killer thread: 

  The people who most vocally claim to be worried about disinformation and Fake News — to the point that they want to censor the internet in its name — are, by far, the most aggressive and prolific disseminators of disinformation and Fake News. Always. Dems & corporate outlets.

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  White Democrats sitting with their white families in their white neighborhoods now believe they own racism and race discourse, to be deployed for their amusement and fun, or with any slight belief that it will advance their interests. They’re the owners👇https://t.co/kGNaSD3VZJ

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Speaking of white Dem scumbags who think they own racism discourse, the Lincoln Project – led by Rick Wilson, last seen frolicking on a boat with a cooler covered by the Confederate Flag – admits to staging the fake white nationalist rally in Virginia:https://t.co/P5yH4D1wB4

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  I can’t think of any clearer expression of the rot of US liberalism and Dem Party politics than the white scumbags of the Lincoln Project — MSNBC stars — engineering a fake racist rally while Dem operatives & MSNBC analysts used it to accuse Youngkin of racism. Utterly sick. pic.twitter.com/sqk7QTvoL7

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And I’d ask rhetorically whether the Lincoln Project admitting to having perpetrated this racist fraud — while MSNBC analysts spread it all over the internet — means MSNBC will stop having them on, but if fleecing donors & covering up for child predators didn’t, this won’t.

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Is anyone surprised?

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 18:12

• 'Poison Frogs': US Urged To Make Taiwan Islands Too 'Painful' For China To Seize In Response To War Game Results
  ‘Poison Frogs’: US Urged To Make Taiwan Islands Too ‘Painful’ For China To Seize In Response To War Game Results

  Authored by Andrew Thornebrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

  The United States would have little recourse if China invaded one of the minor islands controlled by Taiwan, according to a new report by Center for a New American Security (CNAS), a Washington-based think tank.

  

  The report analyzed the results of a virtual war game carried out by the CNAS Gaming Lab that sought to simulate how the United States, Taiwan, and China would behave if China seized Dongsha, a minor island about 190 miles southeast of Hong Kong.

  “With few viable coercive options and the onus of escalation falling on the U.S. and Taiwan teams, the game reaffirmed the difficulty of rolling back territorial aggression of this kind,” the report said.

  War games are not intended to predict future outcomes, the report said. But they are useful for identifying vulnerabilities and exploring different branches of decision making.

  In this instance, the game underscored several potential weaknesses in how the United States is carrying out its competition with China in the Indo-Pacific, and a mismatch in strategies between the United States and its allies in the region.

  Ultimately, the report found that U.S. national security strategy focused too much on defending the island of Taiwan itself from a Chinese invasion, rather than seeking to mitigate more limited acts of coercion and aggression in the region.

  To solve this problem, the authors of the report recommended turning islands like Dongsha into “poison frogs,” a meal too dangerous for China to risk devouring.

  Whereas poison frogs telegraph their deadliness with bright colors, the report suggested that the United States and Taiwan should work to make minor islands more militarily formidable and to clearly telegraph to the world what would happen should they be attacked.

  “This approach would make Chinese attempts to seize these islands so militarily, economically, and politically painful from the outset that the costs of coercion or aggression would be greater than the benefits,” the report said.

  A Worrying Scenario

  A Chinese invasion of Dongsha and other, smaller Taiwanese islands, is a long-feared scenario. It would effectively grant the Chinese military free navigation of a greater part of the South China Sea and would present logistical and military hurdles to others operating in the region.

  The war game sought to explore this problem with a fictional scenario: China used a military exercise as a cover to unexpectedly land a military force on Dongsha, and to seize it from the small Taiwanese garrison stationed there. Following the seizure, China replaced the garrison with one manned by the People’s Armed Police and an allegedly “civilian” force, who then begin converting the island into a military base.

  The game was played by three teams with one representing Taiwan, one the United States, and one China and other international actors, who then sought to respond to the situation as best they could. The teams were composed of Taiwanese, American, and regional experts with backgrounds in defense, policy, and other subjects.

  The exercise immediately unveiled several blind spots in strategy and diplomacy.

  Notably, the United States and Taiwan teams failed to communicate effectively due to technical challenges, language barriers, and differing ideas about the nature of the crisis and the response needed.

  “As a result, although the Taiwan team wanted to take a deliberate, diplomacy-led approach to regain Dongsha, the U.S. team immediately started planning military options to retake the island,” the report said.

  This resulted in a situation in which the U.S. team continuously struggled to compel China to cease its gains.

  The U.S. team could not further escalate the situation without risking war, which would alienate its allies, and its soft power was blunted by the fact that Taiwan had immediately opened back-channel communications with the China team.

  The China team, meanwhile, was able to avoid escalating the situation because its sole act of aggression in taking the island allowed it to sit still and refuse to cooperate without risking war.

  As such, the U.S. team deployed troops to Taiwan and became mired in slow-burning policies aimed at developing regional partnerships and encouraging public-private coordination at home. This ultimately failed to seize the initiative and China retained its gains, undeterred from future hostilities.

  “The move to put troops on Taiwanese territory reflected a broader U.S. team bias toward a somewhat symmetrical action-reaction strategy when responding to the China team,” the report said.

  “For example, when the Chinese team targeted U.S. satellites, the U.S. team responded by targeting Chinese satellites. This impulse could be interpreted as a means of avoiding escalation, but strategically it tended to cede the initiative to China.”

  Lessons Learned

  An integral lesson gleaned from the game was that the United States and Taiwan needed to improve their advance planning for crisis communications and joint responses to Chinese hostilities. Such improvements, the report said, would be necessary to adequately respond to an emerging crisis such as the seizure of Dongsha.

  Regardless, the United States would likely be caught on the back foot in such a scenario, the report said, because of the limited effectiveness of available responses.

  “Punitive non-military options, such as economic sanctions or information campaigns, took too long to produce effects and appeared too weak to compel China to abandon its gains,” the report said.

  “More aggressive military responses risked escalation to war, which both the U.S. and Taiwan teams wished to avoid.”

  Given the few credible options for compelling China to give up its gains after the fact, the report said that the United States and Taiwan ought to consider a more effective strategy of deterrence.

  It suggested using diplomacy, economics, and military power to make small islands such as Dongsha so dangerous to a potential predator as to ward away any potential hostility. Thus “poison frogs.”

  “This approach would make Chinese attempts to seize these islands so militarily, economically, and politically painful from the outset that the costs of coercion or aggression would be greater than the benefits,” the report said.

  “Indeed, discouraging China from seizing Taiwanese territory before it happens is the most salient lesson of the game,” the report said.

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 17:50

• Tucker Rips 'Lying Coward' Liz Cheney After She Joins Democrat Meltdown Over His J6 Exposé
  Tucker Rips ‘Lying Coward’ Liz Cheney After She Joins Democrat Meltdown Over His J6 Exposé

  On Wednesday, Fox News host Tucker Carlson released a preview for a trailer on a new series scheduled to debut next week, which tells the “true story” of the January 6th Capitol riot.

  It appears to both condemn the left for framing the incident as terrorism and its participants as terrorists, while exploring the potential role of the FBI in staging a false flag.

  First, the trailer for “Patriot Purge”:

  November 1 pic.twitter.com/5yCRlkZlzM

  — Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) October 28, 2021

  And a reminder of how the left and its corporate media lapdogs framed participants, anyone who supported the protest, and their little dogs too: 

  SUPERCUT!

  Media: It’s time to treat conservatives like the terror threat they are pic.twitter.com/OfAKa7oqRP

  — Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) October 28, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsUnsurprisingly, the left has been absolutely triggered over Carlson’s upcoming exposé, and wants it stricken from existence before millions, perhaps tens-of-millions of Americans are presented with an alternative narrative that contains highly uncomfortable truths.

  “There is no lie too big or conspiracy theory too dangerous for Tucker Carlson to propagate,” said top Russiagate / Ukrainegate peddler Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) in a statement to WaPo. “His latest salvo is nothing less than an invitation to violence. By airing it, Fox News demonstrates yet again a willingness to profit from tearing the country down.”

  And the above SUERPCUT! isn’t an invitation to violence?

  “It is irresponsible and dangerous for Fox News to promote lies and conspiracy theories,” said Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA).

  Many pointed out that the calls for censorship were fundamentally anti-American:

  This isn’t Ukraine, Alex. We have free speech in this country. https://t.co/rdBPOWiNhd

  — Will Chamberlain (@willchamberlain) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The people who love democracy very deeply and are profoundly concerned about growing fascism and authoritarianism want the US Government to shut down Fox because it’s airing a program exploring the role of FBI informants and infiltrators at the 1/6 riot. https://t.co/pgLphjvPNO

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 28, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  This pussy is afraid of a movie https://t.co/7WxxNwhy73

  — John Cardillo (@johncardillo) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  All it takes is one little video for the “defenders of democracy” to demand tyranny https://t.co/CrLEFJDc9A

  — Scott Greer 6’2” IQ 187 (@ScottMGreer) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  You can search back on CNN’s YouTube page and they used to talk about FBI informant operations all the time pic.twitter.com/nv2RWTfZal

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  And of course, Neocon Rep. Liz Cheney joined the Democrats calling for Tucker’s free speech to be stripped.

  It appears that @FoxNews is giving @TuckerCarlson a platform to spread the same type of lies that provoked violence on January 6. As @FoxNews knows, the election wasn’t stolen and January 6 was not a “false flag” operation. @rupertmurdoch @jayawallace @Suzannescott @SpeakerRyan https://t.co/ODKZFVUFBa

  — Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) October 28, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Carlson responded to Cheney on Thursday, slamming her as a liar and a coward.

  “This show is somehow, she says, abetting violence. Now if that argument sounds familiar, there’s a reason that it does. That argument is a staple for the hysterical purple-haired activist you see yelling at people in violent videos. ‘Your speech is violence’ they shout, ‘Our violence is speech.’ So in other words, burning down America’s cities is a civil rights protest. Shooting an unarmed female Trump supporter to death is an act of courage. But, objecting to racist propaganda being imposed on your kids in school – that’s terrorism, lock those parents up.”

  “Until yesterday, she [Cheney] and Nancy Pelosi had a monopoly on how Americans were allowed to understand January 6th. ‘It was a racist insurrection,’ they told us with straight faces. ‘It was the single worst day of political violence since 9/11 or the Civil War. That was their often-repeated storyline, and they were entirely in charge of that story – no questions were allowed.

  “But unfortunately for them, that is not how a free society works. Politicians don’t get to put parameters around your thoughts or conversations. Free people are permitted to ask any question they want. They can follow the facts to their own logical conclusions, and that is exactly what we set out to do months ago…”

  After Cheney refused to appear on Tucker’s show to discuss her tweet, the Fox News host called her a “liar” and a “coward.”

  Watch:

  Tucker Carlson responds to a tweet from Liz Cheney pic.twitter.com/5UoCp90skd

  — The Post Millennial (@TPostMillennial) October 29, 2021

  Then answer the question, Liz.

  How many were there?

  How many Feds were acting as informants or agents on the ground that day? Give us the number.

  Let the number do the talking. https://t.co/tqnKtc6U2Y

  — Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) October 28, 2021

  What the left doesn’t realize is that they’ve just Streisanded Tucker’s series into national prominence with the best advertising money can’t buy. Whoops!

  Meanwhile, speaking of being on the wrong side of the fence:

  BREAKING: Neocon Adam Kinzinger to retire from Congress after expected re-election loss

  — Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) October 29, 2021

  https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 17:46

• Latest Lancet Study Exposes Limits Of Vaccines At Preventing COVID Infection
  Latest Lancet Study Exposes Limits Of Vaccines At Preventing COVID Infection

  The Lancet has just released another study comparing the efficacy of COVID vaccines to the efficacy of protection provided by previous COVID infections. Their conclusion: while vaccines lower the risk of infections with the delta variant within households, those who are fully vaccinated are still vulnerable to a ‘breakthrough’ infection if somebody they live with gets infected.

  

  What’s more, people who have been vaccinated against COVID can be equally as infectious as the unvaccinated, the study showed.

  The new study, which was published Thursday in the Lancet, the British medical journal that published some of the earliest research on COVID, is one of few to use detailed infection data from actual examples of household transmission, and it showed that – as we noted above – the viral loads of both vaccinated and unvaccinated patients infected with COVID are “broadly similar”.

  The study involved 621 people in the UK with mild COVID infections, identified via the UK’s contact-tracing system.

  

  The data showed that vaccination status doesn’t make a whole lot of difference in the ability to pass COVID on to others.

  Roughly 25% of vaccinated household members subsequently tested positive for the virus after close contact with a fellow household member with a confirmed case of COVID. That’s compared with 38% of infection for people who haven’t been vaccinated.

  These data show that the delta variant has a “greater capability for breaching the vaccine’s defenses when compared with predecessors.

  “Our findings show that vaccination alone is not enough to prevent people from being infected with the Delta variant and spreading it in household settings,” said Professor Ajit Lalvani of Imperial College London, the co-leader of the study.

  The study’s author said the lower transmission rates between vaccinated patients is just another reason to get the jab – although not a particularly compelling one.

  “The ongoing transmission we are seeing between vaccinated people makes it essential for unvaccinated people to get vaccinated to protect themselves from acquiring infection and severe Covid-19, especially as more people will be spending time inside in close proximity during the winter months,” he said.

  The study also underlines the importance of the vulnerable to get booster shots, since it also shows that vaccine immunity wanes with time.

  “We found that susceptibility to infection increased already within a few months after the second vaccine dose – so those eligible for Covid-19 booster shots should get them promptly,” the professor said.

  Following a summary of its findings, the Lancet wrote the “interpretation” of the study: “Vaccination reduces the risk of delta variant infection and accelerates viral clearance. Nonetheless, fully vaccinated individuals with breakthrough infections have peak viral load similar to unvaccinated cases and can efficiently transmit infection in household settings, including to fully vaccinated contacts. Host–virus interactions early in infection may shape the entire viral trajectory.”

  Readers can find the full study below:

  s 1473309921006484

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 17:45

• Largest US Homeowner Raises Rents As Housing Crunch Persists
  Largest US Homeowner Raises Rents As Housing Crunch Persists

  Demand for single-family rental homes is off the charts and shows no signs of abating anytime soon, and that is pushing rents sky-high. This has allowed the largest owner of houses in the US to raise rents. 

  According to Bloomberg, Invitation Homes Inc., which owns approximately 80,000 homes across the country, increased rents by 11% in the third quarter. They raised rents by 8% on renewals and 18% on new leases. Geographically, much of the new increases were found in the Southwest, where rents increased 30% in Las Vegas and 29% in Phoenix.

  “It’s a little bit crazy,” CEO Dallas Tanner told analysts during a Thursday call. “There just isn’t enough quality housing available right now.”

  

  In a separate report, CoreLogic wrote this week, on a national basis, rents rose 9.3% in August from the same period last year. Data showed that all top metro areas tracked by the real estate research firm recorded positive rent growth. The highest growth areas were Miami at 21%, Phoenix at 19%, and Las Vegas at 15%.

  “Converging economic trends are driving a surge in single-family rent prices, and consumer confidence has driven an uptick in demand for both renters and buyers,” Molly Boesel, an economist at CoreLogic, said who was quoted by CNBC.  

  “The ongoing preference toward more living space — and slim for-sale inventory — is forcing would-be buyers back into renting, putting significant strain on the single-family rental market,” Boesel said. 

  However, Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors’ chief economist, believes that surging rents could lead to more homebuyers to avoid rising inflation. 

  Because if you can’t afford to rent, you can afford a million-dollar starter-home?

  Needless to say, rising home prices and rents is more bad news for whatever is left of the middle class. Most Americans will soon be priced out of owning a home and stuck in a renting society where more and more of their incomes are used for shelter expenses, unable to save for a downpayment. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 17:25

• Uranium Bull Case Strengthens As Japan Calls Nuclear "Key" To Its Decarbonization Goals
  Uranium Bull Case Strengthens As Japan Calls Nuclear “Key” To Its Decarbonization Goals

  Submitted by Quoth the Raven at QTR’s Fringe Finance,

  Days after the U.K. said that nuclear would be “at the heart” of its decarbonization strategy, Japan has now called nuclear reactor restarts “key” to achieving its own green energy goals. This marks a far quicker global adoption of nuclear during the ESG age than I had anticipated and, in my opinion, will likely bode well for my long-term uranium bull case.

  

  Last Friday, Japan adopted a new energy policy that went little noticed by those participating in the uranium market.

  The plan seeks to bring the country to carbon neutrality by 2050, according to AP.

  And while this plan is mostly in line with what many other countries are implementing, the proverbial angel for uranium investors may be in the details.

  “Japan has been undecided over what to do about its nuclear power industry since the 2011 Fukushima plant disaster. It now says reactor restarts are key to meeting emissions targets as Japan tries to step up in the global effort against climate change,” the AP report reads.

  Fumio Kishida, who is replacing Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, is officially “a backer of nuclear plant restarts”, the report notes.

  As you can see by the below chart, the country’s operable nuclear power capacity has dwindled in the years following the 2011 incident, after rising steadily in the 4 decades prior.

  As common sense slowly starts to win the day in counties like Japan, I am expecting this capacity to once again rise to, and past, all time highs.

  

  I had pointed out a couple weeks ago a wonderful piece by Zerohedge that said Suga’s replacement would likely back nuclear.

  The AP report continued:

  The plan keeps the target for nuclear power unchanged at 20-22%. Japan says it aims to reduce its reliance on nuclear power as much as possible but that nuclear will remain an important energy source. Experts say a phase out is unlikely anytime soon.

  Economy and industry minister Koichi Hagiuda has said “drastic energy conservation, maximum promotion of renewables and safe restarts of nuclear reactors” are key.

  Japan will continue its nuclear fuel reprocessing cycle, in which spent nuclear fuel is converted to plutonium, despite the failure of its Monju plutonium-burning reactor and international concerns over safeguards for its plutonium stockpile.

  A government taskforce will “accelerate” restarts of reactors, which have been slowed by stricter safety standards set after the Fukushima meltdowns, the plan says.

  And while new reactors don’t seem to be on the agenda just yet, common sense says they will be, in time. Japan, like France, is also looking at developing small modular reactors for power.

  

  Remember, just days ago I noted that a second large uranium trust – in addition to Sprott’s already active trust – could soon be a buyer in the uranium spot market. I also noted that China could be in the midst of adoption nuclear, a path I thought would make tons of sense for the country. I explained my reasoning in this article:

  Days prior to that, I wrote about how widespread coming adoption of nuclear as an ESG solution – especially in places like the U.K. – could be a serious catalyst that keeps uranium prices moving higher.

  With Japan now seriously throwing its hat in the ring, I continue to expect long-term tailwinds for uranium heading into 2022 and plan to remain long the commodity.

  As a wonderful supplement, the World Nuclear Association has prepared a massive and comprehensive report on the state of the nuclear industry in Japan, which can be read here.

  Remember that I laid out my case for why I was going long uranium in detail in a subscriber-only post that can be viewed here.

  —

  Zerohedge readers get 10% off an annual subscription to my blog by using this special link here.

  DISCLAIMER: I own URA, URNM, CCJ and have tons of uranium stocks and options. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. 

  Tyler Durden
  Fri, 10/29/2021 – 17:05